Ep. 1671 - Criminal Alien Hotels? $59 Million WASTED Per Week

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Hey, do you remember four months ago when White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted that Joe Biden had not been spending FEMA disaster relief money putting up illegal aliens in fancy hotels. Former President Trump is accusing the Biden administration of using FEMA funding to support undocumented migrants.
How is the White House responding to that? I mean, it's just categorically false. It is not true.
It is a false statement. False, categorically false, not true.
False statement, opposite of the truth, not right. Well, Elon's Department of Government Efficiency just discovered a $59 million FEMA payment last week to house illegals in luxury hotels in New York City.
FEMA could not find the money to help out hurricane victims in North Carolina. Maybe a $700 check here or there, maybe if the American citizens were lucky.
But $59 million in one week to put fighting age male economic migrants up at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan? Well, no problem. And you think those 59 million

bucks are bad? That is just the tip of the iceberg of what Elon has dug up in our crooked

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What else is Elon digging up? According to the Daily Caller White House correspondent, Reagan Reese, has the scoop that Doge found $900 million of wasteful contracts at the Department of Education. What are these contracts? $900 million across 90 wasteful contracts from the Institute of Education Sciences.
At the Department of Education, an administration official is telling this to Daily Caller. The contracts they found were not directly funding student score improvement, which is the whole purpose of the Department of Education.
$1.5 million, just for example, went to a contractor to, quote, observe mailing and clerical operations at the U.S. Census Bureau's National Processing

Center in Jeffersonville, Indiana. What does that have to do with education? Couldn't possibly tell you.
The contractor was tasked with securing and handling logistic support of an external expert for mail-out operations consultation.

What? What is that? That's just a made-up job. That's like four made-up jobs.
That's like a made-up job for a made-up job for a made-up job for a made-up department at an agency of the government that should not exist. back in the 1880s, in 1883, there was the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act.
This was signed into law by President Chester Allen Arthur. Chester A.
Arthur, a great president in many ways. I actually have a PragerU video on Chester Arthur because no one remembers him anymore.
But he was this crooked New York politician who never really wanted to be president. He accepted the vice presidency so he could dole out patronage jobs to his friends because he was one of the kings of the patronage system in New York.
And then James Garfield died shortly after being inaugurated president, and Chester Arthur became the president, and he was a crook. But oddly enough, through correspondence with this woman in New York, he came to realize that he had squandered a lot of his life and his political opportunity, and he grew into the role as president, and he did not just dole out patronage jobs.
He actually reformed the civil service. The purpose of that reform was to turn the bureaucracy from just a little handout to your political friends when you won an election to a merit-based system to make the government run better.
And that's what we have been told for decades, now well over a century, the civil services. Except what we just found out, thanks to Elon Musk musk and doge is actually it's become a patronage system again the irony is that people were warning that when trump and elon were going to go in and reform the way that the government works that they were going to compromise our dignified civil service which is based on merit and is non-partisan and they were going to turn it into a spoiled system, patronage system again.
But actually, no. Just naturally, what had happened over the century and a half since civil service reform is, it just kind of reverted back to a patronage system.
And so we need another reform. We had the 1883 Pendleton reform.
Now we have the 2025 Doge reform. And we're finding out that there is so much more waste in the government than even the greatest efficiency hawks had considered.
All right. So Democrats, if they're of good faith here and they're being really honest with themselves, should be cheering on Doge.
Because Democrats are the ones who supposedly want a merit-based civil service that is not merely a way to give handouts to your political cronies, right? If the Democrats are opposing this reform, if they oppose Doge as they are, it must be because the Democrats want to maintain the machine. Because the Democrats, in fact, rely upon this patronage machine to advance their interests.
And the minute you get rid of an agency like USAID, which is a feedback loop funding liberal activism, not just around the world, but even in America.

The example I was pointing out last week was your taxpayer dollars go to the IRS. The IRS dishes them out to the federal government.
The federal government appropriates it to USAID. USAID sends that money to the Tides Center.
The Tides Center sends that money to BLM. BLM burns your city down, kills your neighbors, loots your local footlocker, demands that your corporations and politicians further shake them down by the ankles and send more money to the government to go to USAID, to go to the Tides Center, to go to BLM, and it's this feedback cycle.
It's even here, though, within the Department of Education. Then your other money goes to the Department of Education, and that money just goes to the deputy assistant, deputy director of finding experts for mail-out operations for the U.S.
Census Bureau's education initiative or whatever. It's all just graft.
Good on Elon for finding this. Pay close attention to the people who are opposing this reform.
Now, while we're talking about big numbers, it's a smaller number than 900 million, but what about this number, 2,400? You know what that number represents? That number represents the number of files pertaining to the JFK assassination that have just been discovered by our federal government. We're 60 years now after the JFK assassination? Just now, we've just discovered.
The FBI just must have looked behind a bookshelf or something. found 2,400 records tied to Kennedy's assassination that were never provided to the assassination review board.
This is according to Axios. So Trump, in his first term, was going to declassify the JFK assassination files.
This follows decades of American official policy being the release of the JFK files. They were supposed to be released back in like 1992.
And then the government just kept putting it off saying, no, this would compromise national security. It would compromise sources and methods.
It would compromise people who were still alive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They kept kicking the can down the road for decades.
Trump gets in there. He's a real shaker, mover and a shaker.
He says he's going to do it, but even he doesn't release all of them. Second term, especially because he has Bobby Kennedy working for him now, he says, okay, we're going to do it.
We're finally going to release all the records. And this is evidence that I guess maybe they will since the FBI is now admitting, okay, well, actually, we do have thousands more records that people didn't even really know about.
Why are people so fascinated with the assassination of JFK? People are really, they're not as fascinated with the assassination of Garfield, the president I was just talking about, or I don't know, McKinley, or I don't know, why him? Why Kennedy? Is it because he was a really good president? No, he wasn't. There's a modern mythology that's cropped up that Kennedy was this great president and he was shot down in his prime.
Kennedy was not really a good president at all. I fail to see any evidence that he was even a competent president.
He screwed up the Bay of Pigs. He invited the Cuban Missile Crisis because he didn't know how to manage Turkey.
He presided over the construction of the Berlin Wall, which Khrushchev admitted he built because he knew that JFK was inexperienced and weak. So no, he wasn't president for that long and he didn't do a good job while he was president.
Why do people care so much? There's a good reason. There's a totally logical reason.
The reason is because the JFK assassination coincides with almost precisely the moment that everything starts to go wrong in the country. That Americans start really deeply distrusting their institutions.
That you have the Vietnam War, which Kennedy got us involved in, but the Vietnam War really starts to escalate. You had all the tumult of the 1960s, which was in part caused by, was both the symptom and the cause of the JFK assassination.
You had all of the racial strife in the 1960s. You had the advent of not only the massive welfare state, but also a new system of racial discrimination that came up.
You had not even just the racial strife, you had the sexual strife, radical feminism. You had the sexual revolution broadly.
It just kind of all fell apart in the 60s, and we all know it. And it's represented by those wacko hippies who looked dirty and smelly and aimless and it that that's kind of what our country became dirty and smelly and aimless you know we just didn't know we didn't uh exercise a proper order or anything like that well it was in the 60s so i think we're focused on that because we realized something broke here and whether the the break was caused by the kennedy assassination i don't think so, though it did lead people to distrust even further government institutions.
But maybe it's just a coincidence. In any case, we recognize something went really wrong here.
Maybe we need to revisit that era to see if we can get back on the right path. There's so much more to say.
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That's just plain out ethnic cleansing and genocide. That's what he's talking about.
The Palestinian people will remain in Gaza. There is no support around the world for the ludicrous suggestion that he is making.
Well, he's saying give them a choice to leave, open the gates. Yeah, I'm pretty sure most of the people in Gaza would love to remain in their homeland and be where they're born.
Okay, did you catch what she did here? She tries to blur two different concepts. She says, what? She sounds so villainous.
What Trump is talking about here with Israel is ethnic cleansing and genocide. Hold on, hold on, hold on, lady.
I've gotten in trouble for pointing out that in this war between the state of Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian territories, the rational objective of both sides is the ethnic cleansing of the other. Okay, from the Palestinian side, they're quite open about it.
They say from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free, which means at the very least, the complete wiping out of Jews from the state of Israel. And often when you hear Hamas and when you see Hamas act, they do go further beyond ethnic cleansing to the point of genocide.
Some of them call for it openly. So that's from the Palestinian side of things.
And then from the Israeli side, at the very least, the objective is the implicit ethnic cleansing of Gaza. And I totally understand why.
It is an unacceptable security risk for the state

of Israel, if the state of Israel is to continue to exist, to permit a Palestinian state or even a Palestinian territory in Gaza. October 7th, 2023 proved that.
It's an unacceptable security risk. What are you going to do? You're going to wipe out Hamas? Hamas was elected by the Palestinians there.
In many ways, that Gaza was an experiment in a Palestinian state, and the Palestinians failed because they elected Hamas. So what are you going to do? Hamas still has wide support in Gaza.
So come on, give me a break here. Now, I've gotten in trouble for saying that because you're not supposed to say it out loud, but I don't know.
Just show me any other conclusion. I've yet to see the flaw in my reasoning.
In any case, what Ilhan is saying here is ethnic cleansing and genocide are both totally evil and unacceptable. Now, obviously, genocide is.
Yeah, that's totally evil and unacceptable. And ethnic cleansing, that is the removal of certain peoples from territories, is deeply unpleasant, not the sort of thing that one generally pursues.
But it has happened with the approval of the international community in relatively recent decades. Do people forget about the partition of India? Partition of India was 1947.
It involved the movement of millions of people, Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs. Because when the British got out of India, they divided it into two states, a Muslim state, Pakistan, and a Hindu state, India.
And guess what? There were Muslims in the Hindu part, and there were Hindus in the Muslim part, and a lot of people had to move. That is an ethnic cleansing.
Not ideal. Again, not the sort of thing one wishes for, but it happened.
It happened with the approval of the international community. And some people would defend it today and say, actually, it was for the best.
How about the expulsion of 14 to 16 million Germans, ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe after World War II, in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement, in accordance with international law. What are you going to say about that? If you're going to whine and cry and, you know, rend your garments over ethnic cleansing, what about that? That was a major ethnic cleansing, way bigger than what we're talking about in Gaza.
So no, it just seems like these people, first of all, either intentionally or through ignorance. I think, though, the more charitable read and the more accurate read is that it's intentional.
They're pretending that moving people out of territories is the same thing as genocide. It's not.
And they would support certain ethnic cleanses. They would support certain forced movements of people out of territories, but not others.
And they support them based on their own political convenience. The question that one has to ask here, I don't care if you love the state of Israel.
I don't care if you hate the state of Israel. I don't care if you wear a keffiyeh.
I don't care if you are the biggest philo-Semite or you hate the Jews or anything in between. Ask yourself one question.
Do you at present support the

right of the state of Israel to exist? Maybe you don't agree with how the state of Israel was

founded. Maybe you don't agree with the Balfour Declaration.
Maybe you don't find the premises

of Zionism persuasive. Maybe you don't agree with the religious or historical arguments.
I don't

really agree with the religious or historical arguments. That's not the question.
As Christopher

Hitchens pointed out, in his criticism of the founding of the state of Israel, in his criticism

and I'm not going to do that. or historical arguments.
I don't really agree with the religious or historical arguments. That's not the question.
As Christopher Hitchens pointed out in his criticism of the founding of the state of Israel, in his criticism of Zionism, he pointed out plenty of states have been founded on dubious premises. The only question is, do you today support the existence of this nation that has been there for 80 years? If the answer is yes, then you have to take seriously the unacceptable security risk posed by Gaza.
You have to take seriously the attack that took place on October 7th, 2023. You have to take seriously the fact that the Palestinians elected Hamas.
You have to take all of that seriously. You can't defer back to, well, I don't agree with the founding of the state of Israel.
Oh, okay. All right, fine.
So then I guess you support the ethnic cleansing on the other side, I guess. I don't know where that argument really leads.
Now, having defended the state of Israel all that much, I want to take issue with the state of Israel. The Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, just made a very provocative statement on social media.
He suggested that Norway, Ireland, and Spain, because they have accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, they are now obligated to receive the Gazans into their countries. They're obligated or else they would be hypocrites.
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Public Rec, where comfort rules. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz says this.
I've instructed the IDF to prepare a plan that will allow any resident of Gaza who wishes to leave to do so to any country willing to receive them. Hamas has used the residents of Gaza as human shields, built its terror infrastructure in the heart of the civilian population, and now holds them hostage, extorting money from them through the humanitarian aid system and preventing their departure from Gaza.
Okay, put a pause here. I want to point out there are two narratives that come out of Gaza that are contradictory.
One is that the Gazan civilians are totally politically innocent, and they're just being held captive by the evil Hamas,

which opposes their interests. That's one narrative.
The other narrative is that the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, and they broadly support Hamas, and that many civilians participated in the October 7th attack in 2023, and that Hamas faithfully represents the desires of the Gazan population.

Those are contradictory narratives.

Only one of them can be true. It would seem, from my layman's outsider perspective, it would seem that the latter better represents reality than the former.
But in any case, the Israeli defense minister is advancing the former argument here, which is more flattering to the civilians of Gaza, though I'm not sure it's quite as accurate. In any case, he goes on.
The plan will include exit options via land crossings, as well as special arrangements for departure by sea and air. Countries such as Spain, Ireland, Norway, and others, which have falsely accused Israel over its actions in Gaza, are legally obligated to allow Gazans to enter their territory.
Their hypocrisy will be exposed if they refuse. Meanwhile, countries like Canada, which has a structured immigration program, have previously expressed willingness to take in residence from Gaza.
The people of Gaza should have the right to freedom of movement and migration, as is customary everywhere in the world. Yeah, so how about no? How about no? No Gazans to Europe, none to Canada.
Definitely none to Canada. The closer we get to America, the harder the no.
Now, I get the point that he's trying to make. The Israeli defense minister is making a little joke here, I think.
I think he's making a joke. And the joke is, look, you guys, Spain, Norway, Ireland, you have joined South Africa's case in the International Criminal Court against the state of Israel, accusing Israel of genocide.
Well, if you really believe that the state of Israel is committing genocide, then you are obligated to take in Gazans. Now, that isn't exactly true.
I don't know. Maybe there are national laws in Norway, Ireland, and Spain that require this.
I haven't found the exact treaty obligations that would require accepting these refugees. In fact, I think broadly speaking, this seems like a non sequitur.
It is perfectly possible for one to accuse a country of committing any number of crimes up to and including genocide and still not wish to take those victims into one's country if one can instead just stop that country from committing the genocide. it does not follow that because one observes a country committing a genocide and one does not wish immediately to take in the citizens, the civilians as refugees, that one is a hypocrite.
It doesn't necessarily follow. Now, of course, to be perfectly clear, I don't think that what Israel is doing constitutes a genocide.
I do think that implicitly they wish for an ethnic cleansing, and I do think that that is what President Trump's policy, stated policy during that press conference with Netanyahu represents. And I do think that the Palestinians certainly want an ethnic cleansing in the state of Israel, if not an outright genocide.
I do think all that. But I don't think that what Israel is doing constitutes a genocide.
And I agree, in fact, with the Israeli defense minister's frustration with these other nations that are accusing Israel of doing that. So I agree with Israel in that way.
I don't support the cause of a Palestinian state, but I'll just give a little rhetorical advice to the defense minister of Israel. I don't think this little joke is going to land in Europe because the reality is Europe and Canada and the United States have taken in a lot of refugees because of the tumult in the Middle East in recent decades.
And that joke isn't so funny as Israel is dealing with murders and stabbings and mass rapes and grooming gangs and all the

rest of it and terror attacks and churches being burned to the ground. It's just that little joke, it's not quite so funny, actually.
Okay? So if the state of Israel would like to maintain a little bit of international support, I would maybe cool it with the Don Rickles routine. Okay? I would ground the state's defenses on what I think are perfectly legitimate defenses.
The right to national existence as a nation state, the right to defend itself against unacceptable security risks, and the backing of the United States, which is necessary to Israel's plan. I would back it on that.
But these kind of non sequitur hyperbolic little jokes about taking in even more particularly zealous Muslim refugees, no thanks. The kind of Muslim civilians who elect Hamas, yeah, no thanks.
It's not going to land, okay? Now, speaking of migration, President Trump's Department of Justice has just dropped its corruption case against Eric Adams. Eric Adams, not a Republican, not a conservative, actually the Democrat mayor of New York.
If you don't remember the timeline, let me refresh the timeline of this corruption case into Eric Adams. September 2023, Eric Adams says this in public.
And let me tell you something, New Yorkers. Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to.

I don't see an ending to this.

I don't see an ending to this.

This issue will destroy New York City.

Destroy New York City.

We're getting 10,000 migrants a month.

One time we were just in Venezuela. Now we're in Ecuador.
Now we're in Russian speaking, coming through Mexico. Now we're in Western Africa.
Now we're in people from all over the globe have made their minds up that they're going to come through the southern part of the border and come into New York City. Okay, you that so that that was september 2023 well what do you know two months later the biden administration launches a federal investigation into him eric adams in new york he's supposed to be a good loyal democrat but he says look this illegal immigration, this open border from Biden and Harris, this is going to destroy New York City.

Eric Adams actually had a meeting scheduled for the White House, at the White House, and the meeting had to be canceled because before the meeting could take place, there was a federal probe investigated into him. Okay, so it looked pretty crooked to me.
Would Eric Adams had had that federal corruption probe had he not criticized the Biden administration?

I don't think so.

What was the probe into?

It was over nonsense, like accepting seat upgrades on Turkish airlines.

It was very, very silly.

And so Trump now is instructing the DOJ,

or rather the Trump DOJ, I guess on its own, is dropping the corruption case into him.

Because there are new coalitions here, okay?

When Trump remade the Republican Party, he lost some support among traditional Republicans.

And you have to make that support up elsewhere.

So Trump loses Mitt Romney. Trump loses Bill Kristol.
Trump loses David French. Trump loses those guys who were Republicans.
Well, now he's going to make it up with the Bobby Kennedys and the Tulsi Gabbards and the Eric Adamses, which is good. Gives me a lot more respect for Eric Adams.
Now, speaking of Trump helping out politicians, Trump was just asked a really pointed question by Brett Baer. This is right before the Super Bowl.
Do you view J.D. Vance as your successor? Here's Trump's answer.
Do you view Vice President J.D. Vance as your successor, the Republican nominee in 2028? No, but he's very capable.
I mean, I don't think that it, you know, I think you have a lot of very capable people. So far, I think he's doing a fantastic job.
It's too early. We're just starting.
But by the time you get to the midterms, he's gonna be looking for an endorsement. Yeah, a lot of people have have said that this has been the greatest opening almost three weeks in the history of the presidency.
That's been the fastest and the most stuff. Well, we've done so much so fast and we really had to because they have really what they've done to our country is so sad.
It's so sad. We're going to be bigger, better and stronger than ever before.
Okay, what's he doing here? I thought Trump loved J.D. Remember just yesterday I played a clip on this show, J.D.
Vance said to rehire that guy at Doge who made the saucy social media posts. Trump was asked about it.
He said, huh, I haven't seen it, but what's the vice president say? Okay, I'm with the vice president. So hold on.
Now, is this a break between Trump and J.D. Vance? No, that's not what this is.
I think that answer is much less about J.D. Vance than it is about Trump and everyone else.
One, Trump doesn't want to be seen as a lame duck. He doesn't want to be seen as getting involved in the next presidential race now just a few weeks into his term.
Trump is presently term limited for now. Almost certainly he will be term limited.
And I mean, you know, as Norm MacDonald says, no Riverdale Long doesn't contain a ban. But if we had to bet, we would say he's term limited.
So he doesn't want to appear as a lame duck. He doesn't want people thinking about the next presidential election.
But two, Trump has a lot of good people on his team who might want to run for president themselves. He wants to keep them incentivized to do a good job.
He doesn't want them out looking for the next gig. He doesn't want them trying to stab J.D.
in the back. He doesn't want that court infighting to undermine his administration.
So if you want to keep a Marco Rubio, for instance, doing a great job as secretary of State, on the team, really working hard, you need to at least dangle in front of Rubio the possibility that he could be the successor. This is true for a lot of people in the administration.
Pete Hegseth. Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense now, very popular television host.
Pete Hegseth is a legitimate presidential candidate if he wanted to be. You want to keep Pete Hegseth incentivized to be doing a good job at the Pentagon.
This is a little bit more about managing the administration. Will the successor eventually be J.D.? As of right now, it's looking pretty good.
But Trump's going to keep his cards a little closer to his chest. Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Hannah Groves243, who says,

can you imagine getting fired for old social media posts,

and then the vice president of the United States sticks up for you, and suddenly you've got your job back? Not just the vice, the vice president of the United States sticks up for you, and then the president weighs in, and also lands on your side. Yeah, that's pretty good, man.
That is, they should frame whatever those tweets were or whatever that got him in trouble. That's historic.

Trump's interview with Brett Baer before the Super Bowl also gave us a few more important insights into what Trump is thinking.

For starters, on the potential annexation of America's evil top hat, Canada.

The prime minister said this weekend to a group of Canadian businessmen,

he was at a private meeting, he said that your wish for Canada to be the 51st state is a, quote, real thing. Is it a real thing? Yeah, it is.
I think Canada would be much better off being a 51st state because we lose $200 billion a year with Canada. And I'm not going to let that happen.
It's too much. Why are we paying $200 billion a year essentially in subsidy to Canada? Now, if they're a 51st state, I don't mind doing it.
Now look, all right, look, maybe if you're a 51st state, we can work things out. Trump is serious about this.
Trump wants to expand the territory of the United States. He's already done that symbolically, effective yesterday, two days ago, which is to rename the Gulf of Mexico,

the Gulf of America. It is a symbolic way to expand American territory.

He clearly really wants Canada, or I'm sorry, really wants Greenland. And I think he wouldn't

mind having Canada too. This is going to be described by the liberals as a break with the American tradition.
He's upending

standards and norms. Again, again, once again, is there anything more American than territorial

expansion? Is there anything more? We have a whole ideology about it. It's called manifest destiny.

And even that, by the way, wasn't a break with the classical tradition. It's just a

re-articulation, a little American spin on the classical concept of the Translatio Imperii, the expansion of the empire westward, actually, which was the notion originally of Manifest Destiny. So, it's very American.
Just like when people say, these mass deportations are un-American. They're un-American.
What are you talking about? We've had mass deportations in 1830, in 1919, in 1954. We deported a million people, over a million people in a single year, after the Marielle Boatlift in the 80s.
And we've had a lot of mass deportations, okay? That's not even all of them. Same here.
Trump, I think, recognizes that not only would territorial expansion make him a consequential president, he's already a consequential president, but American greatness has historically been tied with territorial expansion. And so if you want to make America great again, territorial expansion, not Bush era nation building overseas, but in a way that wouldn't ever be imperial and we're not going to take the oil.
Don't forget, that was one of Trump's big criticisms of the Iraq war. It was not even on the grounds of just war.
It was in part because we didn't get the oil. So in part, his criticism of Bush's expansions was that they weren't imperial enough okay and i think that's i think that's what he's getting at here now speaking of canada what about the tariffs what is trump really thinking of with the tariffs brett bear presses him you announced uh tariffs on canada and mexico you immediately got action from both of them on border security and drug interdiction.
I did. A lot of action that nobody expected.
Is that good enough? No, it's not good enough. So more needed in 30 days.
Something has to happen. It's not sustainable.
Look, we're not that rich right now. We owe $36 trillion.
That's because we let all these nations take advantage of us. Same thing like $200 billion with Canada.
We owe $300. We have a deficit with Mexico of $350 billion.

I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to let that happen.

So remember, Trump threatens the tariffs on Canada and Mexico.

25% tariffs, maybe higher.

And he says, we're going to institute these because you're cheating us on trade

and you're not dealing with immigration.

And then we get some concessions from Canada and Mexico. And Trump says, okay, I'm going to put a 30-day pause on the tariffs.
And a lot of people predicted, okay, well, Trump got these concessions, so now he's going to let the tariffs pass. It was just an idle threat.
But here you have Trump saying it wasn't good enough, which is probably a good thing to say because a lot of people were saying, well, he didn't really get that many concessions. Some more troops on the border in Mexico, but they already had a lot of troops on the border, so that doesn't do a lot.
And, you know, Canada's going to appoint some director of fentanyl or whatever, but that's not really a serious concession. And so Trump is now coming out and saying, yeah, not good enough.
Because the question with Trump on tariffs is, is he just using the tariffs as a negotiating tactic to get better trade deals? That is to say, does Trump view tariffs as a good threat for freer trade, for the purpose of freer trade? Or does Trump view tariffs as good in themselves because they reshore American manufacturing, because they generate wealth in themselves, because America is so powerful, our economy is so powerful, which is it? Many people have been on the former. Trump is now signaling, no, no, I want the, it's not that

I'm threatening the tariffs, but I'd like to avoid them. I want the tariffs.
Peter Navarro,

I believe elsewhere has stated that this little tit for tat with Mexico and Canada, that's not

even really part of the trade, the tariff policy. That's like the amuse-bouche to the entree of the

actual tariffs. Final point that trump makes

in the brett bear interview brett bear asks him about trump doing the ymca everything dancing

around at the end of his rallies and speeches because it's a little it's a little weird i like

it i find it very charming but it is a little odd what is it here's trump's answer ufc fighters

winning fights nfl players doing the trump dance yeah did you ever think that was going to be a thing? No, I didn't. I mean, we do these rallies.
They've always been great, but they got really great. And it's just, I don't know what it is.
I try and walk off sometimes without dancing and I can't. I have to dance because it's just got something special about it.
I love this. This is one of my favorite Trump answers I've ever heard.
He says, look, I try to walk off stage without dancing and I can't do it. I just have to dance.
I know I'm going to be criticized for making this comparison. There are at least faint echoes here of King David dancing before the Lord.
Trump is a guy who at least got some religion in a field in Butler, Pennsylvania. In fact, I don't know how you don't get religion if you're in that field in Butler, Pennsylvania, and a bullet hits your ear and you survive.
And this guy, he just said, I just got to dance. I don't care if I look ridiculous.
I don't care if people make fun of me. I don't care if it's unpresidential.
I just have to dance. I love it.
That's kind of how I feel with these early weeks of the administration. I just think, this is, how could you be down, man?

The policies have been great.

The vice president is giving to mystic philosophy lectures in Latin.

How could you not dance?

How could you not dance in these early weeks of the administration?

Now, speaking of entertainment, one last little story here I have to get to.

Fox News, the News Corporation, I guess Fox in particular, is being reported as set to acquire another company called Red Seat Ventures. Now, Red Seat Ventures, most people have never heard of it.
If you're in the podcasting space, you have heard of it. They are a podcasting company that white labels podcasts.
They have major, major clients, and they do a very good job. Some of their clients include Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and I believe Bill O'Reilly, which means that Tucker is about to go work for Fox again, in a slightly slightly distant way not directly but it means that fox is acquiring two or i think three of its most prominent hosts ever two of whom were fired by the company one of whom left of her own accord but who was a top billed host they're they're coming back in a certain way.
Because Fox is making a major move into podcasts, which I think is the clearest evidence yet that the New York Times and the Washington Post actually were right when they observed that 2024 was the podcast election. Cable, TV, radio ain't what they used to be.
The media are here. The eyeballs, the ears are here.
The intimacy with the audience is here. It's in podcasts.
That's where we're at right now. And if people want to communicate in the future, they're going to be coming here increasingly.
They're going to be maybe coming here first. Amazing to think.
Everything old is new again. Tucker, Megan, and I believe, reportedly, Bill O'Reilly, all going back to Fox.
Wow, man, that's something else. I'm getting whiplash.
Okay, now speaking of right-wing media figures, I'm so pleased to be joined by my friend Jesse Kelly on the show in the member room segmentum.