Ep. 1686 - Trump's Address To Congress EXPLAINED in 5 Minutes

President Trump's speech to a joint session of Congress last night was the best from any president in my lifetime and probably the best ever. I don't just say that because I like the guy.
I don't just say that because I'm a Republican. It's not even just me saying that.
Even left-leaning CBS News found that 76% of viewers approved of President Trump's speech. 76%.
91% of viewers said that Trump spent time on issues they care about. 63% said that he spent a lot of time on issues that they care about.
We're talking about huge majorities of the country here. 68% said the speech made them feel hopeful.
54% felt proud. Only 27% said it made them feel worse, and only 16 percent said it made them angry.
74 percent of speech watchers called Trump presidential and entertaining. 71 percent called him inspiring.
62 percent found him unifying. America is MAGA country.
Most people are happy about it.

And Democrats in Congress and beyond have no idea how to react. I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the

Michael Knowles Show. The 2028 presidential race is already kicking off, if you can believe it.
And we have our first potential candidate, this one on the Democrat side. And boy, oh boy, it's a doozy.
There's so much more to say first, though. Text Knowles to 989898.
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We went through it last night. Many of you were watching during the live stream.
I was sitting with Drew and Jeremy and Ben and Matt were actually in DC for the State of the Union. So we were chatting all night.
I won't belabor the point too much. But for those of you who just want some of the highlights, Trump woke up yesterday morning and he chose violence.
That's the only way I can really describe it, how he walks in there. Full of energy, very excited, and not willing to pull any punches on the Democrats.
The presidential election of November 5th was a mandate like has not been seen in many decades.

We won all seven swing states, giving us an electoral college victory of 312 votes.

We won the popular vote

by big numbers

and won counties

in our country.

There you can hear

the Democrats.

Boo!

You won all the counties.

Boo!

There we go.

Now you've got

Al Green stands up

as a Democrat congressman.

Then the Republicans

boo him.

Then USA, USA.

...in our country.

2,700 to 525. But a map that reads almost completely red for Republican.
So this speech, which is not technically a State of the Union, because Trump's been president for six weeks, so he's not going to give the State of the union address. It's just a speech to the joint session of Congress.
But for all intents and purposes, it's Trump's first state of the union. He gets up there.
And what is he going to update them on? The big thing that's happened so far is the election where Trump won everything by a landslide and won the popular vote as a Republican for the first time in 20 years. So the Democrats are upset about this.
Al Green, who's tried to impeach Trump, I think, 150 times now. He's already, this term, tried to impeach Trump.
Democrat congressman, a looney tune among looney tunes. He gets up there and Trump, he says, and look at all the counties we won.
We won the electoral college. We won the party.
We won all these counties and barely any counties. Went for the Democrats.
The country voted Republican. It was like a UFC fight.
So that sets the tone for the night. Then Trump points out that the Democrats tried to, well, they tried, I guess, every Wiley Coyote action to get him off of the dais up there to prevent him from becoming president again.

And he has to rub it in their face to point out that he's back.

And we have ended weaponized government where, as an example, a sitting president is allowed to viciously prosecute his political opponent like me how did that work out this was the greatest vindication of an american politician that we have ever seen it was better than nixon nixon had a big comeback it was better than cleveland this is the greatest vindication ever because the Democrats tried to get Nixon and they prevented him from becoming president in 1960. Some people think the election was stolen, but then he won election, he won re-election, but then they got him through a kind of deep state coup.
Grover Cleveland, he's the only other president in American history who won non-consecutive terms, but they didn't try to prosecute Cleveland. They didn't try to kick Cleveland off the ballot.
They didn't raid Cleveland's home. With Trump, he went through this whole ordeal.
They did everything they possibly could. They locked the country down.
They changed the election rules. They tried to prosecute him four different times.
They raided his home at Mar-a-Lago. And there he is standing up there.
He goes, how did that work out for you? I'm more popular than ever. I'm way more popular than I was last time.
And the Democrats, if they're being honest with themselves, can't even deny it. But the real key to this speech, the real key to how it all played out was when Trump set a trap for Democrats by telling them how they were going to behave for the rest of the night.
This is my fifth such speech to Congress. And once again, I look at the Democrats in front of me and I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy or to make them stand or smile or applaud.
Nothing I can do. I could find a cure to the most devastating disease, a disease that would wipe out entire nations or announce the answers to the greatest economy in history or the stoppage of crime to the lowest levels ever recorded.
And these people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements. Trump getting up there and saying that totally gutted all of the immature little tactics that the Democrats were planning to make noise, to hold up stupid signs.
It just made them look silly. It made them look ridiculous.
Because traditionally in State of the Union addresses, the opposition party is not all that enthusiastic about what the president is saying, but for certain things, they'll stand up. We're going to, we want to help people.
Everyone stands up for that. We love our country.
Everyone stands up for that. But in this speech, truly, Trump could get up there and say, I've cured the greatest disease.
The Democrats would not applaud it. Trump gets up there.
He says, we're going to make good on our promise not to tax tips.

Now, that was a Trump campaign promise that the Democrats stole, that Kamala Harris stole, that they campaigned on. This is at least one issue where the Democrats and Republicans throughout the campaign agreed.
Trump says, I'm going to make good on the campaign promise that we both made. Democrats can't even stand for that.
Democrats can't stand up for Trump bringing an American citizen home who had been held prisoner in Russia. Democrats can't stand up and applaud for the families of people who were killed, American citizens killed by illegal aliens.
They can't stand up for a 13-year-old kid, who we'll get to in a second, who's been fighting brain cancer. The Democrats couldn't stand up.
Many of them couldn't even clap for just about anything. That was a trap that Trump laid.
He said, these people are going to look so ridiculous tonight. Watch, I could say anything, and they won't applaud.
And then they did it. He memed that into reality.
Now, there was one defensive move that Trump made last night that a lot of people didn't pick up on. Trump mentioned in his speech the price of eggs because Democrats are saying, well, when is the price of eggs going to go down? Now, of course, Trump has been president for like five minutes.
He's accomplished a lot so far within his purview, what he actually can accomplish, that is enforcing border security. Democrats told us a president couldn't do that without some new law.
Trump has shown you can do that within about five minutes. He's deported people.
He has instituted tariffs. These are all the sorts of things that Trump can do.

But you can't fundamentally reorder the economy. You can't deal with four or five years of inflation overnight.

So Trump set the stage by pointing out the Democrats still own inflation.

As president, I'm fighting every day to reverse this damage and make America affordable again.

Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control.

The egg price is out of control.

And we're working hard to get it back down.

We're working hard, but those egg prices, am I right, folks? Am I right? And it's a way to just establish in the minds of Americans who don't pay close attention to what sorts of political achievements can reasonably occur within the first six weeks of a presidential administration. He's saying, look, I can do immigration stuff, and I have.
I can do trade stuff, and I have. But certain things that are going to lag by months, maybe even a year, things like getting inflation under control, things like getting our supply chains under control, those things are still Biden's fault.
But don't worry, even though I've only been president for five minutes, I am working on it. But then of the whole speech, and we'll leave it at this, we'll move on from Trump's greatest

State of the Union, really the greatest State of the Union-like speech ever, certainly in my

lifetime, certainly since Bill Clinton made them very long affairs.

There was one moment that stole the show.

There's so much more to say.

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I know we've sold a lot of those candles. the moment that stole the show at the State of the Union, or sorry, it's the

presidential address to the joint session of Congress, the kind of quasi-State of the Union, was when President Trump shouted out a 13-year-old kid who's been fighting brain cancer for years. He's had a real tough go of things, and he's always wanted to be a cop.
And Trump instructed the director of the Secret Service to make him an honorary Secret Service agent. I don't care how tough you are.
I don't care how properly waspy you are where you repress your emotions. I dare you not to get misty-eyed watching this exchange.
Joining us at the gallery tonight is a young man who truly loves our police. His name is DJ Daniel.
He is 13 years old, and he has always dreamed of becoming a police officer. But in 2018, DJ was diagnosed with brain cancer.

The doctors gave him five months at most to live. That was more than six years ago.
And tonight, DJ, we're going to do you the biggest honor of them all. I am asking our new man this is this is like the sweetest moment I have ever seen in politics.
And the Democrats couldn't be bothered to stand up for a kid who's been fighting brain cancer for seven years, who gets this really nice honor. It's just really beautiful.
Should be a unifying thing. They can't be bothered to stand up.
I didn't see any Democrats standing up. The only Democrat I saw standing up was Bobby Kennedy, Jr., who's a Republican now.
Some of them, I saw Debbie Wasserman Schultz there used to run the DNC. She wouldn't even applaud for the kid.
These are sick people. These are really sick people.

That's no partisan shot.

You know, I understand they're not going to stand up for everything.

They're not going to applaud for everything.

They're not.

How sick do you have to be?

You get some sweet little kid hugging the Secret Service director, this nice honor at the State of the Union.

Kid's not even old enough to vote, so you don't even have to worry that he voted for Trump. And you can't be bothered to put your two little hands together to pay the kid an honor.

It was sick people. But it got sicker from there, actually, because after the speech,

an MSNBC, one of the worst people on MSNBC, decides to lobby this attack on this sweet moment. I think this was a lesson in finding one thing that you let yourself feel.
And I let myself feel joy about DJ. And I hope he's alive for another, you know, 95 years.
And I hope he lives the life he wants to live. He wants to be a cop.
He knows what he wants to do. And maybe when you have childhood cancer, that crystallizes for you.
And I hope he has a long life as a law enforcement officer. But I hope he never has to defend the United States Capitol against Donald Trump supporters.
And if he does, I hope he isn't one of the six who loses his life to suicide.

And I hope he isn't one who has to testify against the people who carried out acts of seditious conspiracy and then lived to see Donald Trump pardon those people.

What?

You know, very little surprises me.

What's that woman's name?

Nicole Wallace.

Is that her name?

She's one of the real wackos, but she's one of the big stars of MSNBC.

And her reaction to this really sweet moment is she tries to put on a good face.

You know, it's like that meme she's got.

She's plastered on the smiling face.

Oh, that was nice.

I liked that.

Yeah, that was really nice.

But I hope he doesn't kill himself. That little kid.
I hope that little 13-year-old kid doesn't go kill himself after that.

What kind of a demented psycho do you have to be for that to be your reaction? What kind of a demented psycho do you have to be to even think that? to even think that much less say that privately to someone much less say that on national television it's msnbc so there are probably five people watching it's it's like making an utterance in your own living room but nevertheless there are cameras and microphones in that studio this is how contorted with hatred these people have become. This is how divorced from reality they have become because of their irrational contempt for the man that they consider to be the mango Mussolini.
That when Donald Trump, a very, very popular president, who gave an even more popular speech, he's already very popular. His speech was extraordinarily popular with three quarters of the country.
And he says, hey, let's just give a nice honor to a kid who's fought a really brave fight against brain cancer. And this psycho's first reaction is, yeah, I hope he doesn't kill himself.
Sick stuff, sick stuff. And the Democrats' performance in that room last night and the Democrats' performance on television after the speech, I don't think it won them over one single vote.
I think if anything, it sent more votes to President Trump and the Republicans and the MAGA movement because as Trump said in the speech, he was leading the common sense revolution. Common sense, that's a phrase I've been saying throughout the campaign.
That's what the election's about. That's the meaning of this election.
Trump articulating that beautifully. And I think anyone who watched the Democrats display in the Capitol or on television has to think, these people have a screw loose, and I do not want them to have power.
Now, the Democrats did their best to pick the most normal person in their party to give the response to the state of the union. Even that wasn't great.
They selected a woman. I didn't even recognize her at first.
I was watching her on the monitor last night. I said, who is this? I've never even seen this Democrat.
And it's Alyssa Slotkin, who's a new Democrat senator from Michigan. Michigan, obviously, a very important swing state.

She is kind of new to the national spotlight.

It was a tough election.

We were hoping the Republican was going to eke it out in November.

So she makes her national debut, and she tries to soften the edges of a Democrat party that increasingly embraces castrating little kids, makes murdering babies their sacrament, advocates a totally open border, wants to abolish prisons, you know, really crazy stuff that doesn't resonate with Americans. So they picked this woman to try to soften the edges.
I don't think she does a very persuasive job. There's so much more to say.
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We're going to focus on the middle class. Most Americans share three core beliefs that the middle class is the engine of our country, that strong national security protects us from harm, and that our democracy, no matter how messy, is unparalleled and worth fighting for.
Let's start with the economy. Michigan literally invented the middle class.
Hold on, wait. So I was sort of, I was with you, not that the Democrats care about those core beliefs.
They don't. The main thing the Democrats care about is slaughtering kids, castrating little kids, and importing illegal aliens with face tattoos into our country.

Those are the main, at least judging by their advocacy during the campaign. But

Alyssa Slotkin probably thinks Democrats should focus on all the other stuff. But then she lost me at Michigan literally invented the middle class.
I'm pretty sure the middle class was literally invented in like

late

14th century Italy.

I don't think

I think it was a development of the high middle ages and early modern era in continental Europe, not a development of Michigan in the 1950s or something. So her history is already a little bit off.
I'm starting to question her judgment.

And then she makes a claim about illegal immigration

because they can't help themselves

because the Democrats just love mass migration

because they think, all right,

we can't convince actual Americans to vote for us.

So let's just bring in foreigners

who statistically are at least more likely

to vote for Democrats.

And then we'll give their kids birthright citizenship.

We'll try to give them amnesty and maybe we can just gain power politically by cheating. Here's the claim she makes.
Securing the border without actually fixing our broken immigration system is dealing with the symptom and not the disease. So that just isn't true.
Whatever you want to think about amnesty or immigration reform or even border security, just her logic doesn't make any sense.

she's saying that the open border in in contravention of american federal law the open border is a symptom of the disease of having lots of illegal aliens in the country

that have not received amnesty and are living in quasi-legal circumstances. But actually, the opposite is true.
The disease is that we have the open border. That is to say, the root cause of the immigration debates in the country is the open border across which the illegal aliens came.
The symptom of that disease is that we have lots of millions, 11 to 16 million or maybe more people living in this country, many of whom are committing crimes. People who are living in this country are statistically much more likely than the native population to be using welfare programs and to be draining our public resources that we don't know what to do with because they're living in the shadows and in quasi-legal circumstances.
It's not just that this woman is wrong about illegal immigration. She doesn't understand basic logic.
Her fundamental reasoning is wrong. She's confusing cause for effect, symptom for disease.
That's par for the course

with a Democrat She's confusing cause for effect, symptom for disease.

That's par for the course with a Democrat party that has increasingly failed to make persuasive arguments to the American people. So it's the toughest job in politics trying to give the opposition party response to the State of the Union.
Pretty much everyone fails at it. I remember,

was it 2012 or something?

Bobby Jindal gave it and everyone attacked him, said he did a bad job. I remember Bobby Jindal, he was the governor of Louisiana.
And then Marco Rubio, everyone made fun of him because he drank out of a water bottle during the response. And it's just a bad job.
And she didn't do the worst job I've ever seen, but she, I think, ultimately failed to make her case. And it's not even her fault.
She's a perfectly attractive Democrat politician relative to the rest of her party. But her party is just so far gone, and she does have to defend things like mass migration.
And she does have to defend things like LGBTQ ideology, which she alluded to last night, though she tried to soft- it. And she just has to defend things that most people rejected.
Most voters rejected in November. So, looking ahead to potential presidential candidates, we have our first name that's really being floated for the 2028 race.
The next presidential cycle begins almost immediately after the last one ends. And who is that candidate? That would be Minnesota governor, former vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz.
Look, I never had an ambition to be president or vice president. I was honored to be asked.
I told the vice president I would go wherever she asked me. If she didn't pick me and she sent me to Omaha to win one electoral vote, that's what I would do.
I've always done this. If I feel like I can serve, I will.
And if nationally that's what looks like, you know, maybe people like, dude, we tried you and look how that worked out. I'm good with that.
If I think I could offer something or if there's a piece there that would do it, I would certainly consider that. Please.
You know, I don't even feel like I need to get on my knees and beg for this guy to be a presidential candidate or to be the presidential nominee in 2028 because the Democrats are already indicating that they have learned nothing from the election and they're going to keep putting their least attractive candidates into positions of power. The clearest example would be electing David Hogg, one of the least likable Democrats, even among Democrats in the country, the kid who he created a media career for himself by going on television after his school had a shooting.
And then he got into Harvard that way, even though academically it was a little suspect that he got in. And he's just like really annoying and he wants to take away people's guns.
And he doesn't seem to know very much about the constitution and our legal tradition. And they made that guy the vice chairman of the party.
So they're clearly, they are clearly specifically interested in elevating liberal white guys that most people don't like. And so Tim Walz fills that spot perfectly, went down in flames as one of the worst vice presidential candidates in modern memory.
And so if he's the nominee, please, thank you, please. Christmas came early.
Christmas came four years early, I guess. Now we're getting some breaking news, news, according to CNN, that the Supreme Court has

rejected President Trump's request to keep billions of dollars in foreign aid frozen. Foreign aid, remember, doesn't just mean, doesn't even primarily mean sending javelins to the Ukrainians.
Foreign aid doesn't just mean or even primarily mean helping with diseases in Africa. Foreign aid means, to use one notable example, sending a lot of money to the wife of some British politician to go teach Afghan peasants about Marcel Duchamp and how urinals actually constitute really beautiful modern art.
Now, there's a lot of graft and weird stuff in the foreign aid, promoting things like transgender ballet performances in Guatemala or Papua New Guinea or whatever, crazy stuff. And so President Trump and Doge go in and they say, okay, we're going to freeze that.
We're not sending that money out. Supreme Court now rejecting Trump's, reportedly, according to CNN, rejecting President Trump's plea to stop that.

But there's going to be a fight here, okay? And it's actually part of our constitutional system that there is a fight between the executive branch and the judiciary and the legislature sometimes. That's a feature, not a bug of our system.
What's weird about this kind of moment, though, is this is not a case of President Trump trying to exercise control over the legislature and the court coming in and saying, oh, actually, the executive has no right to exercise this kind of authority over the legislature, a co-equal branch of government. This isn't an example of President Trump trying to exercise authority over the court and the court stepping in and saying, no, we're not going to do that.
What's so weird about all of these executive agencies and all this money that is sent over to the executive branch to be sent overseas, really just to promote leftism abroad and at home, because some of that money gets funneled back into the United States. To use just one example, USAID sends money to the Tides Center.
The Tides Center, a left-wing organization, gives money to BLM. BLM burns down your city and pressures the corporations in your country and the politicians in your communities to give them even more power and give in to even more of their demands.
And then the cycle continues, rinse and repeat. That's how this works.
And so what's so strange about this situation is President Trump, the leader of the executive branch, is being told he can't even control the executive branch. This isn't one branch of government trying to take power from another.
It's the duly elected leader of a branch of government trying to control that branch of government. And so that's what distinguishes this governmental fight.
And how Trump reacts to the court's decision remains to be seen because this news is just breaking right now.

In the meantime, though, you're going to hear a lot of talk about true conservative principles.

You hear a lot of talk about, well, you know, President Trump, he's a threat to our order. And we stand by our principles from a bunch of squishes who support Democrats.
Well, I've got, I have now the apotheosis of the so-called principled conservatives who won't support the Republican leader of the party who has been the leader of the party for the past three presidential cycles and who's won non-consecutive terms and who won the popular vote for a Republican the first time in 20 years. He's so principled.
That principled conservative is now embracing transgenderism. We'll get to that in a moment.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Ben BJU4558, who says, C.S. Lewis was walking with a friend when a beggar asked for money.
Lewis gave him the money, and his friend said, you know he's just going to go buy booze with that. Lewis replied, well, that's what I was going to do with it.
That's right. I've never heard that story.
I don't know if that's a true story. It might be one of those, you know, Abraham Lincoln said, and it might be an apocryphal attribution, but it might be real, because I've had similar thoughts sometimes.
You know, you walk around, a guy says, can I have some money? I say, what do you want it for? He goes, I want it for cigarettes. So I'm like, well, you can have a cigarette if you want.
I don't know. That's not better than like black tar heroin or something.
But I remember one time I was walking, actually a friend of mine reminded me of this story just the other day. I was walking and some bum comes up to us on the street and I had just left a bar actually.
I forget, it was in some around the country. And the bum said, Hey, can I have some money? I said, what do you want to do with the money? And he says, I want to buy a beer.
I thought, well, that's honest at least. He's not, sometimes bums will lie and say they want food, but they don't really want food.
They want booze or drugs. But my friend reminded me, I said to him, well, why do you want the beer? He's like, well, I don't know, because I like beer.
You were in a bar. I said, that's true.
I was in a bar. I said, but is that beer going to help you? If I give you the money, if I give you the five bucks for a beer, is that really going to help you? Because I can go have a beer.
This is one of the cruel twists of addiction, I guess. I can go have a beer, and it's totally fine, because I'm not addicted to beer.
I don't even like beer that much. But that guy, who's clearly an addict, he likes beer so much that he can't ever have beer.
And this is a line Norm MacDonald, the late great philosopher Norm MacDonald made in his memoir based on a true story.

Said, you know, it's kind of crazy.

My friend Adam Egan, he's an alcoholic.

So that means he likes beer so much. He likes alcohol so much he can never have any.

But me, I don't like alcohol that much and I can have as much as I want.

And yeah, that's how it works.

That's how it works in a fallen world.

Okay.

Speaking of a fallen world, this is a doozy. The Democrats are attracting very few people to their party.
They've lost a lot of ground with Hispanic voters, black voters, with women. 74, 75% of people said they liked Trump's speech last night.
They thought it was good. A lot of people, 91% said Trump was speaking about things that they care about.
Trump won the popular vote, obviously. But one guy, at least one guy, has gone from Republican to Democrat.
And that would be Bill Kristol. Bill Kristol, former chief of staff for the Republican vice president, Dan Quayle.
Bill Kristol, the former head honcho over at the Weekly Standard, which was formerly, until it went out of business, it was a premier conservative publication. He was on Fox News as the conservative talking head.
He had a real prominent position as a conservative thought leader. And Bill Kristol tweeted this yesterday.
Stand with trans Americans. You don't have to understand everything about the transgender experience to know that Trump's acts of humiliation and dehumanization are unjust and dangerous.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you your principled conservatives embracing transgenderism, an ideology that presents a false view of human nature that does not help anyone, that harms everyone that it touches, that tramples on the legitimate rights of women, that has led to rapes of women and girls in bathrooms, that has led to women's skulls being cracked in because of transgenderism in sports. That has led to women losing their medals and scholarships because transgender identifying men compete against them and beat them.
Your principled conservatives are now embracing transgenderism. This is proof positive of the accusation against some Republicans that Republicans are just liberals five to 10 years too late.
They're conserving the liberalism of five years ago. I don't even know if it's five, it might be two years ago for this guy.
I remember I was in college, Bill Kristol came up to speak, and one of the conservative students in college, conservative, quote unquote, he was defending same-sex marriage. Now, this was before the Obergefell decision.
This might have even been before. It was right around the time that Obama switched his view.
But it was right around the time when Obama still defended marriage as it truly is and opposed so-called same-sex marriage. And he said, I think we Republicans should embrace gay marriage.
You know, that'll be good for everyone. And I remember Bill Kristol scoffing at that idea.
And I think he published at least one column about this. Said, no, no, no, conservatives should not embrace same-sex marriage.
That's crazy. That's absurd.
And now I'm waiting for Bill Kristol to paint his face in a rainbow. We stand with the trans AmericansAmericans, trans kids' rights or human rights.
Is he going to wear a free Palestine keffiyeh next? I don't know. Who knows? Who knows? What do these principled conservatives conserve? I've just noticed, having met a handful, having known even somewhat well, a handful of these malcontents over the years.
The hard line never Trumpers. The never Trumpers in 2025.
They all describe themselves as principled conservatives. And they are the least principled people in politics that I have ever seen.
What principles do they hold? The principles of petty personal grudges and milking a little bit of money out of new donors, even those who oppose everything you've ever pretended to stand for in your whole life. Crazy.
Crazy. Meanwhile, the Democrats continue to make themselves look totally ridiculous.
Democrats in the California legislature are proposing a new bill after those devastating fires. So devastating fires occur, burn the city down.
There are lots of reasons those fires occurred. Totally predictable Santa Ana winds that the political leaders refused to prepare for.
Because the California leaders in recent years didn't want a clear brush in their woody areas. President Trump warned Governor Gavin Newsom about this in 2018.
Because the city emptied reservoirs before those predictable Santa Ana winds. So the Palisades Reservoir didn't have any water in it when the fires broke out because the global warming obsessed Democrats decided to send 95% of rainwater into the Pacific Ocean because they feared that if they collected the rainwater like reasonable people, they might damage the Delta smelt, some tiny little sardine or something.
So all of these political problems led to the fires. Some people took actions to protect themselves against the fires.
Notably, Rick Caruso, who ran as a Republican for mayor of Los Angeles and lost to former communist, maybe current communist, Karen Bass, but literally this woman associated with communists. Terrible.
She wasn't even on the continent during the fires.

That's how neglectful she was of her duties. So Rick Caruso has a very popular property in the Palisades.
Beautiful little mall. Lovely property.
And it didn't burn down. Because Rick Caruso hired private firefighters in advance of the Santa Ana winds to protect his property.
So the California Democrats,

trying to make life better,

ostensibly for the constituents, they propose a bill. Does the bill say that they're going to clear the brush? No.
Does the bill say that they're going to keep their reservoirs filled? No. No.
Does the bill say that they are going to keep their rainwater so that they don't shove it all into the Pacific Ocean and they have water to fight the fires when they come? No. The bill that the California Democrats are proposing, AB 1075, bans private firefighters.
This is the perfect encapsulation of the Democrat Party.

This is Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut. They're not going to help anyone live a better life.
They're just going to prevent certain people from living a good life. They're not going to elevate everyone.
They're just going to handicap the people who are doing reasonable things and flourishing. They're not helping.
They're just being vindictive. The guy who ran for mayor, who Angelino could have had for mayor, who prepared at least his own properties for the fire as a private citizen, they're going to punish him.
They're not even thinking, how could we have saved all of these homes in this historic fire? They're just thinking, how could we have burned Rick Caruso's property down? Okay, well, next time we'll burn that down. That's perfect.
And this is not just the California Democrats. This is true of Democrats nationwide.
They do not even think about how to help people. They are purely thinking about how to punish their opponents.
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Now, a big feature of the speech last night that a lot of people aren't really talking about, but it was a huge proportion, proportionally it was a huge part of the speech, was when Trump was talking about tariffs and we're getting mixed messages on tariffs. Are tariffs a negotiating tactic? Are tariffs just a sound economic policy to raise revenue? Is Trump really going to levy 50% tariffs on Colombia, or is he going to take them away the next day when Colombia acquiesces? Is he going to levy big tariffs on Canada and Mexico? Is he going to keep the tariffs on China? What's the deal? So he says he's going to levy those tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and then he says there's nothing that they can do to stop the tariffs.
Then Howard Ludnick, his commerce secretary, comes out on television and says, actually, maybe the tariffs will disappear tomorrow. Or at the very least, maybe he'll walk them back tomorrow.
He's going to come out today angry that Americans are still being killed. Now, both the Mexicans and the Canadians were on the phone with me all day today trying to show that they'll do better.
And the president's listening because you know he's very, very fair and very reasonable. So I think he's going to work something out with them.
It's not going to be a pause. None of that pause stuff.
But I think he's going to figure out, you do more and I'll meet you in the middle some way. And we're going to be announcing that tomorrow so somewhere in the middle will likely be the outcome the president moving with the canadians and mexicans but not all the way so this is the big question to me the the interesting question i was debating this a little bit last night with ben on the backstage show he has been very opposed to tariffs in principle now Now, Ben and Jeremy was saying this too.

They're open to tariffs as a negotiating tool to get greater global trade.

But they oppose tariffs as a matter of economics.

And I pointed out, I said, you know, there actually is a principled economic argument for tariffs.

I know these days, everyone who's taken a seventh grade economics course and has watched like one Milton Friedman video thinks that they know everything about economics and there's no case for tariffs. But there's actually a long tradition in this country and in the Republican Party and just in global economics for tariffs.
Abraham Lincoln famously said, give me a tariff, I'll give you the greatest nation on earth. So the question that exists is, is Trump using the tariffs to negotiate for better trade deals and open up global trade? Is it just, are the tariffs just instrumental to him for greater free trade? Or does he really believe in tariffs? And does he really want those tariffs, whether or not he gets concessions from the trade partners, so that we can reshore American manufacturing, so that we can rebuild America's industrial base, so that we can reorder the economy of the United States to be more conducive to the kind of country that we had in the middle of the 20th century, when things seemed to be going pretty well, when all things considered, America was pretty great.
And maybe we want to make it great again. Which is it? Are the tariffs just, are they kind of a bluff? Or does he really believe in this? And I don't know the answer to that.
I'm not a clairvoyant. I'm not reading Trump's mind.
However, just want to point out, for any who doubt Trump's political skill, I can't believe anyone would doubt it now. Some people still say, oh, he's a dummy.
Oh, he doesn't know what he's doing. Oh, it's like, okay.
All right. Hey, you get elected president on your first real go at it and then get elected to a non-consecutive second term and then be historically popular.
And yeah, good luck. And then bring peace to the Middle East.
And yeah, good luck. You try it.
I think he's pretty sophisticated. But my point on Trump's political sophistication is, even I, I watch the guy pretty closely, even I do not know if he's bluffing on the tariffs or if he really believes in them.
Because if he is bluffing, he is acting exactly as the kind of person who really believes in them. Even down to saying, we're going to have a new McKinley era, okay? Even down to we are going to fund them, we will get rid of the income tax because we're going to make so much revenue on the tariffs.
And that is the defining feature of Trump's foreign policy. The man is totally unpredictable, totally inscrutable.
And if you are one of the people negotiating a trade deal right now with Trump, you have to believe that there is at least a 15, 20% chance that he just is dead set on the tariffs and you got to do everything you can to head those off. It's like when Trump told Putin reportedly that if he invaded Ukraine, he'd bomb Moscow.

And Putin might be thinking there's a 5% chance he means that. But are you willing to take the risk? That is a great political skill.
And he showed it, Trump showed it in spades last night. The best cars for the money are Hondas.
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