Rich Lowry

Thanks for having me.

Well, I don't know how the media is going to restore credibility, but this was one of the most preposterous lies that we've ever seen. And it was perpetrated in front of our faces. We all saw it. Now, one of the revelations of this book is that they're considering... A wheelchair. Now, why would that be shocking?

Anyone who's had an older relative and they begin to shuffle like that and they have some falls, you know, it's not getting better. You're holding your breath, you know, every time they're going over the edge of a carpet or a rug. But they they just lied to us about this. I remember when when the fall, which one was it, Mark? And it was at West Point. We went over the sandbag. Yeah. Yeah.

And I tweeted, this just isn't good, right? When you're this age and you begin to fall, it's downward from there. And John Harwood and others are, what are you talking about? Gerald Ford fell down and he was the most athletic president ever. Yeah, we all trip and stumble, but we're not all 80 years old and clearly in decline. So we could all see it. We all knew it.

We all had some, we didn't know exactly what was going on, but we all had some sense of what was going on. And at least now the truth could be told, but it's only now that it's less inconvenient to tell the truth that's beginning to come out.

Yeah, they can't admit it even now. I mean, Amy Klobuchar was asked about this on Meet the Press over the weekend. Should he have dropped out sooner? And she said, oh, yeah, of course, you know, but we're focused on on the future. But there's there's a lot hanging on that, of course. Right. No, no one said it at the time. It was only when it became completely undeniable and.

Potentially, or they realized it was catastrophic after the first debate that they began to turn around on this. But Mark, I just remember when Clooney wrote the op-ed, right, which kind of was a key inflection point in getting Biden out. He said at that Hollywood fundraiser that I sponsored, he wasn't the same. But we all we all saw that fundraiser.

We all knew Obama was there as a crush to have like a lively person on stage. And Biden clearly froze when he was waving to the crowd. No one waves and has to be reminded to stop waving. That does not happen in normal interactions. All this pointed out in real time. That's weird. That's concerning. Something's going on. They all said we were full of it.

They all said we were making it up, that it was a hoax. But as soon as Clooney says, oh, he wasn't the same, then you have John Favreau, you know, one of the Obama bros saying, I was freaked out at that fundraiser. My wife was freaked out. My wife asked me, John, what are we going to do?

Everyone was talking about it at their tables, but none of them dared say a peep about it again until they thought, OK, this is unsustainable and we got to do something else.

You know, it's like Edith Wilson. Right. I mean, Wilson has a stroke. It is debilitated. And she she runs the government and they have people come in. They cover up. I don't know whether it's the right side.

you know, maybe JFK and the dalliances, which kind of everyone knew, but you didn't talk about publicly.

Yeah, yeah. It wasn't like, yeah, it wasn't like the public saw him go into a swimming pool with the secretary and the media said, no, you're making it up.

Maybe FDR 1944. Yeah. But, you know, he was reelected and people were willing to look past it. And he had like back then campaigning was different. So he had one campaign event where he drove around New York City in the rain. I was like, OK, he's he's still he's still vigorous. But everyone knew otherwise everyone knew he was dying.

Well, it's not as great as the first month or two, but that's kind of inevitable, right, Mark? The first month or two, you control events as the president, and then inevitably things happen to you. And the first thing that happened to him was Signalgate. Not a huge event. But it shifted the narrative a little bit. But I think the tariffs are the big story.

And that's not something that was done to Trump. It's something he did. He had to touch the hot stove. He was warned by people, don't do it this way. There's going to be a big market reaction and real economic turmoil. in the country, but because he's such a deep believer in tariffs, he went and did it and he got the reaction and now he's pulling it back.

So the optimistic scenario continues to have various deals with other countries, gets the big, beautiful bill. There's some still economic disruption just based on what's happened at this point, but no recession and you move on from there. But I think that's the biggest story of the Trump presidency so far.

I don't know what Trump came up with that, Mark.

I think that's a good that's a good counter point. I'm not sure that Trump that they were ever discounting Trump or not paying serious attention to him. And there's a mutual blinking here. So the that's sort of the optimistic take from the U.S. perspective is he realizes how vulnerable he is. On the other hand, he knows how vulnerable we are, right?

And Trump blinked because there is a prospect of empty store shelves, of higher prices, of small businesses going extinct if you just pulled the rug out in terms of our relationship with China. So I just think in general, maybe you're right about China, but Even if you are, really, the UK, we couldn't just sit down with the UK without this huge tariff threat.

And Vietnam, really, if Trump came to them and said, I'm going 45% of you guys in 90 days unless we sit down and talk, they're not going to talk. They will. And my worry is geopolitically.

that because we've tariffed everyone, including our allies, it's a benefit to China because they have the opportunity now to go cut deals with all these countries and say, look, we're more reliable than the United States. We're not going to pull the rug out from under you.

When the play would have been, to the extent we were upset with our allies and various restrictions on our stuff, go work that out with them. Try to do it behind closed doors and then ring fence China and then deal with China from a position of strength where you have all these better deals with the allies.

Yeah. So I've always been a big fan of I'm an effing crazy person argument. I think there's there's a lot of deterrent power and being perceived that way. But I think since that is already his image, that he could have gone into a room or sent someone to the room and say, look, this guy is an effing crazy person. So let's talk now or in 90 days, you don't want to see what's coming.

And that would have gotten their attention the same way this did. But the downside of this, Mark, is there's been real economic harm, right? You've had businesses not knowing whether they're going to get their stuff. China and the container ships. And we stopped it because of the risk of what we're going to do to ourselves.

I'm leaving aside Susie Wiles, Scott Besson, the vice president, and the vice president. I would say one is Sean Duffy, who is dealing with a lot of stuff that he didn't expect. He's an extremely effective communicator and is going to get a bipartisan bill dealing with all the stuff that people... want to stop.

You know, Stephen Miller, some people have an image of him just totally based on the driveway press conferences and the cable TV performances. You don't survive in Trump world for, you know, it's been almost a decade without being extremely adept political player. Also, he is one of the most creative and acute political minds I've ever encountered.

It drives people crazy when I say that, people who just know him from the cable hits, but I'm telling you, it's absolutely true. And I need a third. What are some nominees for a third, Mark?

Yeah, Marco. Wyckoff? Not a big Wyckoff. Not Wyckoff. Definitely Marco. I should have thought of Marco. So Marco comes in a little bit like Waltz. If people are very mad at people or suspicious of him, probably have the knives out for him. It seems as though his bailiwick's getting chopped up, speaking of Witkoff, you know, various special envoys.

So it seemed as though he could be very weak Secretary of State, you know, maybe on his way out before the first year. Instead, he's wearing all these different hats, has earned the president's trust, the base's trust, and has done really good work. And they've been on the ladder, the base's trust. I mean, obviously, both of them, they've been really deliberate about it.

They think a lot about it, and it has worked.

Yeah. One of my favorite parts of that moment, you don't know, but when DJ's talking to the head of the Secret Service right afterwards, he imagines, so what do I get to do now? What are my responsibilities? How do I get on the job? But this is a tradition that goes back. I think Reagan was the first to do it, and there was a terrible Air Florida crash.

And at Washington National Airport, it wasn't Reagan then, of course. And there's a guy who I think might have been an off-duty fireman or just a bystander who swam out of the icy Potomac River and saved someone. And Reagan had that person in the balcony recognize his heroism and sacrifice, save this person. So everyone's done this.

Trump's taken it to a different level, though, because things – it's not just recognizing someone to make a point or to honor their – He makes something happen with Limbaugh. Right. He awarded the Medal of Freedom right there. You know, has a secret head of Secret Service come down. So things are happening. So it just goes to he's a showman. Right. And he he envisions this as a show.

And to quote another John Pedort's tweet from last night, it's like it's a version of Oprah. You almost think Trump at some point is going to ask every member of Congress to look under there. their seat there and find their gift. Right. So they can go out happy. At least Republicans would go out happy. Democrats would reject the car. They got a free car last night just on principle.

Now, this one, there's real ideological component. It's not just Trump derangement the way it is with DJ. They hate talking about victims of illegal immigrants. They just don't don't want to hear about it. They won't do it. The only time I can remember any Democrat ever addressing it basically is Biden was heckled into saying Lake and Riley's name incorrectly in a State of the Union.

And Kamala Harris asked by Brett Baier about it, grudgingly says, you know, this is terrible. They just they just can't. It doesn't compute for them. They think it's inherently hateful to point out that this this happens. All crimes are terrible, obviously, but as an extra layer, if it's someone who just shouldn't shouldn't have been here and they don't they don't get that, they won't admit it.

And the best line for Trump the whole night, obviously, was that we didn't need a new immigration policy. We just need a new president, which has been absolutely ridiculous. True. He obviously overpromises sometimes and overpromises on how quickly he can do things, but this is something he fixed instantly.

Just one, just the deterrent effect of Donald Trump being president again convinces a lot of people, well, maybe we should wait and see what happens. Two, they just ended catch and release. Now, they need more resources. There's more policies they need. They need some help from Congress. But he's just turned off the faucet almost instantly. So there's less strain on cities.

You have Roosevelt Hotel, which has been housing illegal immigrants closing down for that purpose. You're going to have less criminals just by sheer math, right? If you're illegal immigrants coming in, the fewer illegal criminals you're going to have. And he did that instantly. And Joe Biden could have stopped this from starting in the first place by not reversing all the Trump stuff or –

done it himself, but he didn't want to. And they don't want to be faced with the consequences of what was a deliberate failure.

Yeah, and I was going to say also, get up and clap for the fact that the border's closed, right? They all say they want to address illegal immigration, but they really don't, right? They should be happy that this has happened, but they're not because if they wanted this to happen, Biden would have done it.

Again, they think there's something wrong with doing this. They think it's hateful and xenophobic to highlight these cases. For ordinary people, these cases obviously are a gut punch made much worse by the fact that the horrible criminals who perpetrated these crimes shouldn't have been here.

So saying, look, this terrible thing happened, and I'm going to stop it by stopping these people to come in isn't a 70% or 80% issue. And it's a huge reason that Joe Biden – I mean, Joe Biden, if it hadn't been for the Afghan pullout, if it hadn't been for inflation, hadn't been for the border, he wouldn't have lost. You throw an age there. But Kamala Harris probably would have won.

These are huge issues. And Trump, you know, something he highlighted earlier. coming down that escalator in 2015 when it seemed very extreme what he was saying. It seemed it was just Steve Miller and Steve Bannon. They believed that. No one else did. It couldn't sell. It would alienate Hispanics.

And here we go where he's actually implementing it or re-implementing it from what he had figured out the first time around and is hugely popular. That's just been a sea change in American politics.

it's a psychological malady. It's literally sick. I mean, you look at that from a rational perspective, you're like, okay, that must be a deep fake of what Nicole Wallace would say in such a circumstance. Say it's a lovely moment. Say the kid's a hero. His dad's a hero. We wish him the best. And yes, we want research to get

cures and therapies to to make kids in such circumstances long lives as possible and move on right to connect it to january 6th how do you even how does that even come into your mind a cancer survivor a kid in a police uniform that's the first thing you think of it's it's mind-boggling

There are other things that you can object to that Trump said, if you're Nicole Walsh. Lots of them, in fact, but not DJ.

very evil. Yeah, what we're talking about in Capsule here is the debate over who's normal, right? And for them, it's just a theological matter that Trump is not normal. Look, he's unusual in a lot of ways. In some respects that we've talked about, some good, some bad. It's an unusual stay of the union or address a joint session of Congress.

But if you just look at the reaction to DJ, a president hailing this kid, a nice gesture for this kid, everyone standing up applauding, wiping tears from the eyes, that's Normal. Sitting grim-faced and not reacting to this story or connecting it to January 6th is not normal.

And this obviously is a reason why Trump won the elections, a reason why he's thrived, at least in relative Trump terms so far politically, is because he's occupied the normal ground in American politics. And they're spun off into outer space somewhere.

But we know that over 2,000 cops were severely injured during those riots.

Yeah, I'm a Ukraine hawk, but what Trump is talking about in the polling is is popular and most people are going to strike them as common sense. Let's strike a peace deal. And again, it's another thing that we've had this weird reversal where

Any other person saying, oh, I'm going to try to forge a peace deal in this long-running war, or at least war has gone on for three years, more than a million casualties, the atom all up probably, and this is a bad thing, right? So the tactics of getting there I don't necessarily like. I don't know what's going on. going on behind the scenes.

But we established Russia is not going to win the war and the sense of taking Kyiv and toppling the government and creating a Russian puppet state out of Ukraine. And Ukraine is not going to win the war in the sense of regaining all their territories. So it's time for it to end. And again, this is a commonsensical position, one that a lot of Americans would consider normal.

Again, I don't think necessarily the way we're getting there is not normal. That Friday Oval Office confrontation with Zelensky was not normal. It's like something we haven't seen before. But the goal, let's stop killing, is not something that ordinary people are going to recoil from. It's something they're going to think makes sense.

This was a shocking breach of decorum. The worst we've ever seen. There was some heckling of Biden from Marjorie Taylor Greene and Boebert, which I didn't like and thought was wrong. And there's Joe Wilson, who was a great guy, by the way. And I think was, if I remember correctly, was

was an unplanned interjection you know it's kind of just popped out i think he regretted it afterwards and when he did it there were gasps in the the chamber so to have someone just stand there and shout and wave a cane at the president of the united states and have to be forcibly ejected i thought for a while he might resist right they might have to carry him or something at least he he walked out and expressing no regrets afterwards and saying it was a great thing to do is shocking

It's it's it's another step down in terms of our politics and a terrible moment for for Democrats, because this will be one of the most replayed moments of the night. And it's a 77 year old angry man waving a cane saying, get off my lawn to the president of the United States, which is not not a great look.

Towards the end, there was like a look of irritation on Trump's face where you're like, okay, is he going to go there? But he did. And he just said thank you very much after Speaker Johnson handed it back over.

Yeah, yeah. I think so, but probably just because this is an unprecedented thing. You're the Sergeant of Army. Yeah, it wasn't code pink. Expect to just kind of stand there with your hands folded, not to have to go eject an unruly member of Congress, but –

Total breach. This will be when when Al Green inevitably offers the next articles of impeachment being expelled during Trump's address to the joint joint session will be one of the articles we can assume.

I thought it was okay. As you know, I mean, this is just an impossible task. The only good response ever was the late, great Fred Thompson, who was an actor and sat on his desk and gave a response in the 90s that was fantastic and very memorable. And it's like, great to talk of a presidential run. But this is a very hard assignment.

I think what you sought there, that's a critique you can make of Trump. I don't think it matters for most people. I think the best thing for Democrats to say is his priorities aren't your priorities, and you're going to pay the price, and he's not doing enough to reduce prices. I think that's where they should go, and it should be kind of a traditional Democratic strategy.

Argument against a traditional Republican president. He's he's helping his rich friends. You know, I think that makes sense for them. All the other existential threat to democracy stuff is is not going to get them anywhere.

I don't think we're going to know the future of the Democratic Party for a very long time. I don't think the opposition and Congress really figures out how to react to a presidential loss. You just hope things go wrong. They do. Inevitably, events happen. Capitalize on those and then hope you get a decent presidential candidate who figures out something new.

He's the great white hope. Rich, great to see you.

Yeah, I think for the ordinary viewer, there's nothing you heard last night that you necessarily disagree with. I don't know, maybe tariffs or some things, but largely he emphasized things that are popular. And the headline of that speech, the headline of the first two months is Trump 2.0, the sequel, more Trump than ever. So it was longer, it was more combative in some ways, more entertaining.

And it These aren't really speeches so much. They're performances, right? So George W. Bush used to give speeches. He had the speechwriters, Mike Gerson, the late Mike Gerson, my friend Matt Scully, right? These eloquent speeches that he'd deliver. You can't do that with Trump. It has to be in his words and his way of speaking, which it is.

How many times did he say, like, we've never seen before, right? No speechwriter sits down and writes speeches. like we've never seen before. And the point you're just making a minute ago is as apt, you know, a comedian, a really good comedian, you can say his lines as an ordinary person and they're not funny, right? Or they're not as funny.

And 80% of the things Trump said last night that were entertaining, you could say them, I could say them, someone else could say them. They wouldn't be funny because they're Trump because it's uniquely Trump. So I don't like State of the Union addresses. I prefer a State of the Union to be a 20 minute eloquent, thematic speech. But that speech does not exist.

No one's ever given that State of the Union. That's not what Trump did last night, but it works for him. Now, it's it's not hugely important. But by Saturday, you know, two or three other major major news stories will have happened. But it was a good night for him.

Yeah, just the way it says LBQIA+, it is funny, right? There was a great meme last night of Al Green waving his cane, and the caption was, they promised me trans mice, because one of the items he, of course, mentioned was his experiment to try to create – Trans mice. I don't know whether they're successful or not.

Probably if they're in the San Francisco school district, those mice, they would be certainly be trans. But that was hilarious. People hate that stuff. And it's memorable as well. It's something if people are listening at the bar, they'll take away and remember the next day.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it was pathetic. So either just sit there and be civil. And by the way, clap at the nice moments. There's no reason for any American not to clap when DJ has this amazing experience of instantly being made an honorary Secret Service member. Or just leave in mass and just do it. I think that would be bad. I don't think it would play well for them. But they got this in-between play.

So it was just pathetic. And it just advertised their cluelessness and their powerlessness. So and Trump, obviously, he did this a lot in the first term as well. But last night was really explicit. I'm going to call you out for not applauding anything I do.

And then I'm going to have these wonderful people in the in the balcony who are cancer survivors or victims of parents and loved ones of victims of terrible crimes. Or I'm going to announce that we got the guy. who blew up our 13 service members at the Abbey Gate. And I dare you not to clap. And they didn't. They took the dare. So they look grim. They're checking their phones. Just clap politely.

You're not going to lose anything. But he got the reaction, exactly the reaction he wanted.

Yeah, totally. And they just believe, and they have believed for a long time, that there's some way to delegitimize Trump such that he'll go away. In the media, on MSNBC, they had this constant debate whether they were going to platform him and show his speeches live. That was going to make a difference one way or the other, whether it was on MSNBC.

And they seem to think that holding up their little auction paddles somehow is a gesture that's going to be meaningful to someone. There is a famous intellectual, Lionel – Frilling in the 1950s had this line about conservatism at the time, which wasn't in a great state, that conservatism is just a series of irritable mental gestures. And that's what progressive is at the moment. Maybe not mental.

Maybe that's giving them too much. Or mental maybe in the psychological sense. But all they have at the moment is irritable gestures, and that's what the paddles were.

Feels like there should be an SNL skit on the medicine that addresses irritable gesture syndrome.

Yeah. And he told them what he was doing. Right. He was banking on them not reacting to even things that are unquestionably good or moving or endearing. And and they just they couldn't bring themselves to do it because Trump is literally Trump saying it. Right. It's Trump derangement syndrome for everyone to see on live TV shows. and mass, right?

If anyone else said, here's this adorable kid who's gone through this horrific illness in a police outfit being lifted by his father so people can see him, they all would have stood and applaud for the kid, but nothing to do with Trump, for the kid. And they couldn't bring themselves to do it because Trump said it.

But they didn't acknowledge that again until – late in 2024, the middle of 2024, that finally realized, oh, this is going to get Donald Trump elected. We at least should try to do something about it. And then just the insanity of the trans stuff. And there's some cracks there. They're just cracks, right? It's

It seems it's brave in the Democratic context for Gavin Newsom to say, oh, yeah, there's a fairness issue for male if a male plays in a female sport. But they tried to hide all that. They tried to gaslight us all on that. They said we're hateful, retrograde purveyors of disinformation, all the rest. But the public could see the truth, which is a big reason that Donald Trump won last November.

Yeah, it's Paul.

George Clooney might be more plugged in than NPR.

Right.

Yeah, so you're right in what you said at the top of this segment. You got this dynamic going in the media where there are headlines about chaos at the Pentagon, and there are headlines about headlines about chaos at the Pentagon, right? So they want to create this phenomenon, and very often it works. It's not going to work with Trump. I wouldn't expect him to be dumped over this anytime soon.

But what's disturbing, and it relates to what J.D. said, right? Because J.D. went right to Pete's strength, right? inspirational figure, more recruiting. People want to go and be in that organization that he's going to devote to war fighting. When people want to sign up for the military, that's why they want to do it, right?

So everyone who was in favor of his nomination said he's a change agent, jolt of energy, better recruiting. Great communicator. All that's true. But no one said he's a great administrator and we're extremely confident he can run the Pentagon. And what's disturbing about this, it'd be one thing if the building just randomly, the establishment were shooting at him. And I'm sure it is.

But this was a war, an ugly war for power and influence among his people. His loyalists, the people he brought in to help him run the building. So I still think the big question is – some people have rocky starts when they take major steps and responsibility like this, and they figure it out. They learn from it, and it evens out.

But there is a question, a bigger question now, whether he'll be able to run the building. And this thing about the signal chat, who knows? We haven't seen that. A journalist wasn't CC'd on that, so we haven't actually seen them.

But it just feels to me when you're roping in your wife, your brother, your lawyer, you are someone who feels embattled, doesn't know who to trust, and you're going down to this core of the very most loyal people you have. And that's just – you're not going to be able to run the building that way.

He needs some big chief of staff who can really do this job that's probably not within his current circle of trust, but he has to develop trust with. And this just isn't easy. A lot of people aren't managers, and this is a huge managerial job. So I don't think he's going to get ousted for this. I would expect them to continue to support him.

But I think there are concerns whether he can figure this out, and he needs to start figuring it out because it's a big job, and everyone should want him to succeed.

Yeah, I was going to say when this first broke and they're basically frog-marched out of the building, I thought they had to have receipts. There's no way this happened without serious receipts. But then Caldwell's denial was so categorical with Tucker. As you pointed out, I think yesterday, Megan, it There's some legal jeopardy here.

So usually if you have exposure, you're not going and talking about it at length with a high profile interviewer the way he did. And then Hexeth in his interview on Fox and Friend with Brian Kilmeade, I thought Brian did a great job. He said something that made my ears perked up. He said, and they or others around them might've been leaking. So wait a minute. So was it them?

And we know it's them and that's why they're removed and fired? Or is it someone around them? And who are those people? So there's a big question mark.

Yeah. So look, great communicator. No doubt about it. Great communicator. There was a reason he was on TV, but a little overly defensive, a little excitable, kind of jumping around a little bit. There's some people giving the advice, don't do any more media for the time being, but his survival there and his success, which is more important. Pete Hexeth doesn't matter in the scheme of things.

You want him actually to make our force more lethal and lean and mean and all that depends on running the building. It's really hard coming in as a change agent. One of these big agencies, it's really, really hard. Very few people actually succeed in it. But he needs some help in that regard.

And the first team of people he brought in that he thought were loyalists maybe weren't, obviously is not it. So he's going to have a second bite of the apple. But we should hope he has some serious administrators who are going to run the place for him.

Yeah, they always go to Hitler. It's so boring. It's so conventional, but they can't help themselves. There's nothing that Trump has in common with Hitler, right? He's a thoroughly American figure, runs through this populist tradition, going through Andrew Jackson, Huey Long, George Wallace, not the racism of George Wallace, but the anti-elitism.

And there are things to like and really dislike about that tradition. That's all fair game. But they got to go to Hitler. And look, Bill Maher did the right thing, right? Donald Trump, like it or not, is at the center of our national life. Bill Maher is a hugely consequential commentator who talks about Donald Trump all the time. he should know as much as he reasonably can about Donald Trump.

And as Winston Churchill used to say, there's nothing like being there, going yourself and seeing yourself. And he learned things about Donald Trump, right? And they didn't accord with his worldview. And unlike George Clooney, until the last moment with Joe Biden, he admits it.

and will admit the attention and say he actually learned something, and he's going to share it with his viewers, which is the honest, factual thing to do. And the fact is, Donald Trump in person, he's a professional host in part, so he can be extremely gracious.

He's a great one-on-one politician, which accounts for a lot of his hold on the Republican Party, which you might miss unless you know that about him. And now Bill Maher knows it. He went and found out, which was the right thing to do.

Yeah, so this is my latest hot take on this. One, the politics are just terrible for Democrats, right? Because if you say I'm advocating – they have so little credibility on immigration. If you say I'm advocating for a legal immigrant who may have beaten his wife, probably did beat his wife, may be a member of MS-13, but it's all about due process.

A lot of the public is just going to hear, oh, you're advocating for an illegal immigrant who may have beaten his wife, may be a member of MS-13. So this is not a good issue for them. But I think like substantively in terms of where we are in deportations, it's the whole alien enemies thing is a blind alley. Let's say the administration succeeds legally, which seems unlikely.

But all the TDA members go to that prison in El Salvador. Okay, great. We still have 18 million illegal immigrants here. And so far – There are a couple of things that need to happen to really deal with that. Many people pointed out, you pointed out, the problem is they come in here without any due process, right?

And then once they're here, there's all this procedures and it's so hard to get them out. So one, you need Congress. We need more ICE officers. We need more detention space. And during the campaign, they were talking about massive tent cities to house people. Where's that? Well, you need Congress.

to fund it and then you need reform of the asylum system which is an outrage which was abused by this guy abrigo garcia not technically asylum withholding removal but it's basically the same thing as absurd you know he his family suffered from gang violence they weren't persecuted in el salvador and the business that was being extorted had closed at the time he got this withholding a removal

So the occasion for this extortion that he was complaining about was no longer there. And then the gang got crushed, right? So there's no fear whatsoever. And he was still living free in this country. So you need to change all that. But also, I think it's from the power of the Trump administration now to do worksite raids. And it's understandable they're going after the worst people.

You do that for some substantive reasons, obviously. You do it for the politics. But you've got to – I'm making up the numbers. You've got to send like 15 ICE agents to get one guy because he might be a threat. He might shoot at you, right? You need a lot of robust presence. Worksite raids, you send five ICE agents to a meatpacking plant in Iowa, and you get 150 guys.

And you deport them, and then you find the hell out of that meatpacking plant. And then what happens is every other meatpacking plant in Iowa says, we don't want to be fined. They go to their legal employees. Sorry, guys. You can't work here anymore. And then you might have some of those legal employees saying, you know what? I don't want to be deported. I don't want to be held in detention.

I'll go home on my own. And the biggest thing we need, which is I've been shocked for 10 years that Donald Trump doesn't talk about this. He's very ambiguous on this issue. You need a so-called e-verify system. That's a foolproof system where you just can't hire people who are illegal aliens. That drives up all the jobs.

And then you might have millions of people saying, we don't want to be here anymore. So we're just not going to be able to cherry pick our way through 18 million people and work through this process and really move the numbers. You need those kind of things to make a big difference in my mind.

Yeah.

Yeah, of course. I think this, Megan, though, it does go to a contradiction. On the one hand, illegal immigrants, they should be detained until their proceedings are fully worked out and they're removed. That's what the law says, and we've just never done it. No one's done it. Abrego Garcia was released during the first Trump administration. He should have been held.

They all should be held, but we need more detention space to do that. But if the argument is, well, this in El Salvador is just basically detention space like in America – Then you're going to get the courts will saying, well, OK, you effectively have control over over all these prisoners. So if we're telling you to bring them back, it's not a foreign policy issue. It's just a U.S.

detention space like any other just happens to be overseas. So, again, I just don't I don't I. So they're straining at every possible – looking for every possible avenue they can to hopscotch procedural obstacles to get the numbers of deportations up, right? Because we had 10 million come in or whatever it was the last four years, and they got to go, and they should go.

I just don't think they're going to prevail on this one.

Yeah. So on the procedures, this is why we should do many more expedited removals. I understand the statute. You can do an expedited removal. It's basically no process. It's kind of a common sense thing. They come here illegally, you turn them back around, and they go home, right?

Yeah. The broken and insane and lunatic asylum process is a huge element of this immigration crisis we've experienced over the last 10 years or so. It needs to be drastically reformed and perhaps reformed. My friend Mark Krikorian, Center for Immigration Studies, makes a very compelling case. We shouldn't do it at all. We can have a certain number of refugees.

They're in our country, in some other country, and we decide to admit them. But the whole process of someone getting here and then starting this huge procedural process, that means they'll stay, right? That's how many – that's how it's worked in the past. That's why they're coming. That's why they say these certain things that they think are magic words that get them to stay.

That's got to end, but you need Congress to do it. On this thing, the El Salvador prison, I think there are a couple of reasons the administration has dug in. One, they don't like to admit mistakes. I do think Abrego Garcia, clearly a deportable alien – could have been deported anywhere else. I think he should come home and be deported to Panama immediately in accordance with the lawful process.

But one, they don't like admitting error. Two, they want this power, right, to be able to do this in an expedited manner. Three, as we were discussing earlier, I know MBD disagrees a little bit, they think it's good politics. And four, if If if I hope they don't do this, they shouldn't do this in my mind.

If they're going to defy a court on something, this thing is set up perfectly for that purpose. Right. Supreme Court says bring him back. And you say it's no Salvador. You go get him. You go get him.

Oh, yeah. Vomitous. God bless these parents for standing up. It's not always easy to do this. The Montgomery County, one of their arguments was we can't have an opt-out because so many parents will opt out. Well, maybe that's a sign, right? Yeah, they said it became unruly. What does that tell you? Maybe that's a sign. The public school should be consensus, boring, conventional educational matter.

That's it. College, yeah. Take your – courses on controversial literary theory or critical theory or whatever, but not in grade school. And I think they will prevail. They should prevail. The argument that was made from the progressive side, from the bench, is that this isn't coercion. It's just exposing the children to this material. But that's Part of the point, right?

These parents don't want their children exposed to pride puppy and searching for leather outfits in a book for second graders or whatever it is. It is absurd. The only case you can make for having this stuff in the classroom is that you're going to have an opt out. You shouldn't even have it then. But to not have an opt out is totally sustainable. Wrong. A travesty won't stand.

That clip, it's so telling because that is what they used to call the voice of God, right? That was Walter Cronkite. That was when there were three broadcast networks and nothing else, and they were just telling you the truth. You sat down for 30 minutes and you had to believe every word they say. His DNA is right from there. That's in his line.

of authority and he has the voice, he has the look, but it's just so obviously stilted and ridiculous and wrong. And so that's why that whole mode of media is not as influential as it was and never will be again.

Thank you. Megan, I got a programming tip for you, by the way, or recommendation. I think you need to do an afternoon update, too. So you're doing morning, show, and afternoon. So you're literally just broadcasting all during the day, right? Just do the full thing, right? Don't hang it up.

Thanks for having us.

No, of course not. Classic Hollywood phenomenon. He plays someone in a movie or writes a movie about someone and then thinks he has great insight to what that is. Maybe he's kind of one himself. Clearly he says, I'm not a journalist. But then he said he did this journalistic thing, exposing the truth. He's been to Darfur. Yeah, so good for him for his activism there. But look, he lied constantly.

at the very least, bio mission about Joe Biden, right? He hosts this fundraiser in Hollywood. Everyone sees what's happening. Everyone sees him freeze on stage. Everyone knows he has debilitated to some extent or other, and no one says anything. And when all of us pointed out who watched it with their own eyes, they said we were making it up.

I don't know whether Clooney actually said we were making it up. They certainly was fine with everyone saying that we made it up. And then the debate happens. They can't deny it anymore. Then he comes out with his op-ed. Everyone knew he was not the same man that we had seen before.

So for him to lecture anyone, anyone, even someone who doesn't have your journalistic record on what fact telling the truth is, even if it hurts and what being factual is, is a complete travesty.

Yeah, there are a lot of things that are shrouded in darkness. One, the president's condition, which we talked about. We're still learning more about what people on the inside knew and saw and did. Yeah, by the day. The border, again, these were things that were out in the open. So the operation to hide them did not succeed because people could see with their own eyes.

Yeah, no, it's core executive function, core executive decision, what you're going to spend money on and what you're not. It's a little bit like saying, you know, if the military says we don't want to recruit obese people for combat roles and the judge saying, well, you can pay for the Ozempic, right? It's not that much. You know, you're paying much more for your missile programs and your tanks.

So why won't you pay for this? It's not her decision. And as Charlie rightly points out, this is, it's not, not everyone gets to serve in the military, right? If I want to go in combat, right now, which I don't. My hat's off to everyone who does. They'd say, no, you're too old, you're out of shape, and you've never made a bed in your life. You're not suitable for the military life.

And they'd be right. And by the way, another reason to take the initiative here that the Pentagon is, is it's very important to Pete Hexeth, to send the message, we're no longer doing social services. We're no longer doing progressive social studies. We're focusing on fighting because that is a way to attract the people you want to the military.

These guys and gals who are attracted to the military life, they're different than we are. They want the adventure. They want the risk. If they wanted to sit and get a lecture about how they're racist, sexist, transphobic, and all of that, They go to their local community college. That's not what they want to do.

So you want to create the – send the image and send the message, which he has in various ways, right? He's done deadlifts in Germany with the guys. This, a whole host of other things to send. You know what? To say for the people who are attracted to this – We are a military organization. People are in shape. That matters to us.

That's another thing he's doing is having a review of the physical fitness of members of the military. Come here if you want the adventure to defend your country. So I see this as part of that.

Well, let's put a pin on that and see what the facts are. He is an Obama appointee. His view of the law, Constitution, not mine, but he has a pretty good reputation. Now, this case, it involves a couple of things we've seen before. One, The Trump folks kind of rummaging through current statutes to find things that give them the authority they want to do on deportations or on the border.

This was quite effective in the first term. There was a migrant crisis, small scale compared to what we saw under Biden. In Trump's first term, Trump was tearing his hair out. How could we possibly stop this? He had Stephen Miller and others going and looking at current authorities and using them in a creative and lawful way. to create the system that Biden then ripped up.

But that had succeeded in basically stopping border crossings. Now, here, they're going back to the 18th century, and there's nothing wrong with that necessarily, right? 18th century has a lot of good things, including the United States Constitution. But it also involves what we're talking about in the first segment, determination by the President of the United States, what national security is.

What's an invasion, whether we're at war? And here I do think they're pushing the envelope. Maybe they're banking on maybe they'll be right. The Supreme Court will ultimately just say, look, you're the chief executive, you're the president. You say it's an act of war, these gangs coming into the United States. We're not going to contradict you, but I'm not sure that's going to be the case.

And what the judge is asking here basically is just to freeze things in place. It wasn't like – Judge Ali in one of those early USAID cases saying you've got to spend all this money, billions of dollars of money in 36 hours or whatever it was. It's just let's hold these people so at least I can hear the merits here. So on this one, I wouldn't have gone to war with him, but they have.

Yeah, so obviously this is an initiative entirely consistent with Secretary of Defense's entire priority at the Pentagon, which is to focus on warfighting and not get distracted by any other nonsense. And you can make an entirely rational case that gender dysphoria is not consistent with the rigors of combat and what you want an organization devoted to combat to focus on.

Yeah, well, in terms of politics, obviously, this is good for the Trump administration. All you need to know and all most people will know is they have limited time to focus on this is the president of the United States deported hideous gang members or alleged hideous gang members, most of whom probably are hideous gang members to El Salvador and a judge tried to stop them.

So they're with the Trump administration. By the way, the president of El Salvador is incredibly like, give me more of these guys, you know, no other foreign leader. I want your gang members, but the president's all sound. This is what I do. This is my core competency. So, look, I have not I have not followed this as closely as you and Charlie have. But it seems to come down to me.

Can the president just if there's any just the slightest colorable argument that something's an evasion or coercion, can he just say it and no one else can countermand him? Right. And in that case, he's going to win. This is beyond that. Right, but I don't think, is it an evasion the way we typically define an invasion? It doesn't have to be a full invasion.

And in fact, this determination is so rational, it was actually the case. It was the status quo as of, what, 10 years ago or something? So it's an innovation where we've accommodated these folks. And this is, Megan, this for me falls into the range of these legal decisions, legal contentions.

Well, look, there are bad things that happen or terrible things or tragic things that aren't the product of an enemy action, right? Is Venezuela ordering these gang members to come into the United States to wage war against us?

Well, that's different than an invasion, right? That's not the Wehrmacht coming across the French.

If there's a... If there's a culpable case such that you find it reasonable, can a judge just say, forget it. The president of the United States says it's so. He's declared it. He's proclaimed it. End of story. That may be the argument that prevails. But I'm with Charlie in that we're having an argument about this.

If it has to do with the president of the United States' core executive functions, how many people are working for him, who's working for him, What's national security and not? He's ultimately going to win these cases. Now, I think it's it's highly irritating. These these judges, some of them are totally ridiculous and it's going to delay things.

Okay. I got this going, Megan, so you can envy me.

But this seems to me one that he will ultimately prevail on.

Yeah, totally agree. By the way, this puts pay to the conspiracy theory that had a brief life after the address to the joint session of Congress where Trump said, you know, appreciate it on a hot mic to Justice Roberts, you know, I'll always remember. And everyone's like, oh, it's the immunity decision that he's thanking him for, where actually look at the full tape.

He's thanking everyone as he goes down the line here, generals and other justices.

But keep going. So this was this is really, really dumb because one, he's not going to get impeached. Right. So there's there's not. Maybe you can make the case if he's on the verge of getting impeached the first time the judge is going to get impeached for not, you know, corruption, but for one of his rulings or actions, maybe the chief justice would feel compelled to speak out.

But he's just responding to a Trump criticism of this judge, which was lurid and over the top and all caps and calling for him to be impeached. But if the chief justice is going to get in the business of rebutting the president of the United States every time he criticizes a judge, the chief justice is never going to shut up, right? He's going to be very busy.

And these are cases that are going to come up to him in his court. So what if he, you know, this didn't happen, Trump didn't take the debate, but what happens if Trump hits back at the chief justice, right? And you get a war between the president, a war of words between the president and the chief justice. You speak, if you're a justice of the court, you should.

You know, they do book tours and whatnot, but you should speak largely through your opinions, your well-considered opinions. When you've considered everything carefully, it's come up to you appropriately, and it's something in your ambit. That's your role. So this was, at the very least, imprudent from the chief justice.

Yeah, so first of all, I love this National Review Day, Charlie versus Megan. I love the throwdown we're having here. Look, I think Roberts is right on the merits. I don't think it'd be a good idea to just go and impeach judges for their opinions unless they're mentally ill or something or just not competent to carry out their duties or they're found in gold bars and they're

suit pockets the way Senator Menendez was. But I just don't think he should have said it. I don't think it helps the standing of the Supreme Court that he's so concerned with justifiably. But Senate confirms judges, right? That is part of our system. But we're not going to impeach these judges. There's never going to be the votes for it. So at the end of the day, this is a real sideshow.

Well, it's preposterous, but it's the political views you'd expect of this guy. At least it didn't use the word that some have used. to describe his dissension, which he's been taken hostage. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that might have been his wife's statement that was read from the courthouse steps last week, which is just perverse from people who- But not read by his wife, interestingly.

What's that?

She read the wife's statement.

Yeah, yeah. The statement was from the wife. It was read by someone else. But these are people that have torn down flyers with pictures of Israeli hostages who've never said anything about Israeli hostages, who were literally pulled from their houses, their beds, their children. held in dungeons. They're not just cold, right, heinous acts of violence being perpetrated against them.

And this guy, who is an immigrant to the United States, as Marco Rubio has eloquently stated, has no right to be here. Charlie can speak to this fulsomely, by the way. If you're an immigrant, a legal immigrant on a visa, a tourist student visa, or even a green card holder, you are obsessed, if you're a normal person, with abiding by every single rule law and rule.

You don't want to park on the wrong side of the street because of what might happen to you. And this guy, you know, there's a cognizance of guilt, right, Megan? He said, well, I don't go in the media very much because I'm an immigrant here and I might get in trouble. I don't want to get in trouble because who knows what could happen, right? And it's happened. So it's entirely on him.

And it kind of ties back to the first segment on the trans issue. In the military, you don't have a right to be a member of the military and you don't, as a foreigner, have a right to be in the United States. So I'm sure it's not pleasant to be in a dissension facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, but he brought this on himself.

And this is something, I think it's a bit of a close call, but I think ultimately another theme in our discussion today will be based on the determination of Marco Rubio that it is against the national security interests of the United States to have these protests creating a false image of what we are and what our priorities are. And he was a leader in that effort. So goodbye.

It shows he's assimilated in that respect, Megan, right? It's the most American thing in the world to accuse our own country of racism.

Let's do this January 6th. I'm just asking you a question.

Yeah, it's meant to punish and coerce. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

I have no idea. Could be wrong. She played softball. That's all we know. She was a softball star at some point. That's circumstantial.

And there's something about the Senate that creates certain kind of leaders. They take on the aspects of the institution. Now, this is true of Mitch McConnell. Republican base didn't like Mitch McConnell, even though he was very good at his job in the Senate. But he wasn't going around pumping his fists and trying to pretend like he was something he wasn't.

And that's what Schumer is doing, just like Tim Walz is when he's saying he's going to kick people's asses. I will say at least this is a cartoonish version of what a lot of Republicans or Elon Musk wants or thinks, they're not Nazis.

So Elon Musk is a techno-libertarian, but people are spray-painting swastikas on his car because they just think if anyone's on the right and they disagree with him, therefore they must be a fascist or Nazi. At least this is a cartoonish version of the way entrepreneurs or libertarian-leaning Republicans think, but it's still

cartoonish and Chuck Schumer just doesn't, you know, I think AOC would be an idiot not to challenge him in that Senate primary coming up several years away now, but I think she should go for it.

Yeah, well, we all have our moments and I wouldn't have known what all those are, but I'm not environmentally So this is hugely embarrassing. And Lee Zeldin, I agree with Charlie, he's great. Now, you got to be careful because the first time around, a lot of great stuff happened to EPA as well. And it all got reversed because it wasn't careful enough.

So hopefully Lee Zeldin is dotting his I's and crossing his T's there. But I would also I wouldn't think like O's would be a natural stand in for something that's going to be filled in. And usually you leave something blank. You'd have underscores of the journalistic way to do it is a capital T and a capital K. So, yeah, we should have been a little more spelled a little more careful here.

Yeah. What is weird? He has kids like a dead polar bear. Sorry, dead stuffed polar bear. Sorry, this polar bear is dead. That's just the world you live in. This is one of these beats, Megan, like every climate reporter in the country, probably, if they haven't written those sort of things, they think it, right? It's like covering gender or misinformation or disinformation.

There's not one honest, straight, objective journalist who ever ends up on a beat like that.

Yeah, it's a parody. You know, and they can't just say that, You know, the science suggests if the projections are true, that 50 years from now, 100 years from now, if we keep warming this way, natural disasters will marginally be worse, right? I mean, it's always hell is upon us. Every single natural disaster is directly caused by climate change.

It's kind of like COVID in that the people who are most supposedly committed to the so-called science get over their skis and ignore the science to make the most hysterical politicized case for the policy outcomes they want.

Yeah, seagulls are just looking for a stray sandwich they can snatch. That's the seagull play. They're not awed by anything.

Thank you. It was a pleasure seeing you guys argue. We have to do it more often.

Yeah, so one opine is the right word. What you read would be pretty good, at least kind of bog level, one third of the New York Times column, right? But that's not her role as a judge. And we had a lot of loose talk, right, of a constitutional crisis. I think we talked about that last time we were on.

It's a constitutional crisis if judges are overstepping their bounds and impinging on the executive authority. And the people who scream loudest about a constitutional crisis, they never focus on that, right? Everyone has their appointed role in the constitutional system. And if anyone oversteps it, that is profoundly wrong. So this decision is profoundly wrong.

And the point you make about your race being different from your so-called gender identity is a good one. And this is one reason, and maybe we're going to talk about this later, that the left is so wrong-footed on the trans issue. They thought it was a civil rights issue, right? They thought it was like civil rights for African-Americans or civil rights for gay people.

And they've gone into something that most people do not consider that way because it is a totally different category. And this opinion is a prime example of that.

Well, I wouldn't put it like that. And I think that's an extrapolation that is typical of MSNBC, because they always think everything is some great fascist plot. And Elon Musk was hinting at this for reasons unknown when he waved at the crowd yesterday. But I do think it's pretty bad. I do think a lot of the people who were involved in January 6th committed crimes. And

Behaved in a way that is completely unbecoming of a republic with the encouragement at the time of the president. And I think if we were looking at this the other way around and we were talking about, say, rioters from the summer of 2020.

and the Democratic president had issued these mass pardons, some of which covered people who'd been violent and antagonistic towards the police, we would say that that is corruption and it's partisan. And it is. I do agree with you from a political perspective that the decisions that Joe Biden made at the end of his presidency are just utterly inexplicable. He was...

he says, inspired to run for president because of Donald Trump and his desire to restore dignity and honor to the White House and respect the rule of law and all of that. And he ended his presidency by being more lawless than really any president in modern times and thereby pulling the rug out from under anyone who wants to complain about this. But two wrongs do not make a right.

And I think that the abuse of the pardon power that we have seen over the last five days should make a case for its being You have to do that with the constitutional amendment, of course. It would be almost impossible because no president wants to give it up. But I would favor that. I'm with the anti-federalists on this. I think it was a mistake to put it in.

And even if it wasn't, I think it is now a mistake to have it in the constitution. I would get rid of it.

Hang on, hang on. It's the FBI. I think the FBI doesn't fit within our system because it's federal. I have no issue with cops. I've never had an issue with cops. I like it. I'm a localist, though. The more local the cop, the more I like them.

I think that there are just a huge number of people on the left who don't know much about the country they live in. As I say, two wrongs don't make a right. So don't interpret this as a justification of what Trump did. But they don't know that those pardons were issued.

Right from the beginning of Joe Biden's presidency, he was a character, an avatar, a creation of a political movement that needed him to be a certain way. Last time I was on the show, we went all the way through the number of times it was said on television that Joe Biden's refusal to pardon his son said so much, showed so much.

It was illustrative of the moral virtue of those left of center within the Democratic Party. And it just wasn't true. He, little did we know at that point, then made it much, much worse at last minute, pardoning members of his family, blanket pardons that go back 11 years.

I just think that one of the issues that the left has and one of the reasons they lost the last election, despite Donald Trump's behavior after the 2020 election, was because they don't know much about the country they live in. They don't know much about the people who live in it. And they don't know much about how its politics work because they're constantly fed this narrow set of news.

It would not shock me if Cory Booker didn't know. Those pardons were issued. I look at that guy who I think is a fraud. I'm not pretending he's some oracle. Spartacus? I look at that guy. I look at that guy and he strikes me more as a naïve than as a liar. I think he doesn't know. I think he doesn't know it.

I love everything about that. I love what he said. which was coupled in his inauguration address with a promise to drill baby drill and use the energy. That is imperative. I like the policy. We should never have been in that agreement. We should not be in any agreement that restricts our ability to grow our economy. And I like it as a matter of constitutional hygiene.

If this were a treaty that had been ratified by the Senate, then the president could not have stood there yesterday and announced that. But they rarely are. these arrangements, their executive agreements. And the thing with executive agreements, irrespective of the merits, is that they can be pulled out of just as easily as they can be made. And Donald Trump demonstrated that neatly.

This is the side of the new administration that I absolutely love. That was legal. It was good for our constitution. It was good for the country. It's good policy. And the way he characterized it, it's just so important This is a matter of debate in Britain, too, where the British, who have even less of an impact on the global climate than the United States, are destroying their country.

They're destroying their economy. They're making old people spend their winter shivering in the corner because of guilt. over a problem that is mostly now the product of the developing world. I don't, by the way, begrudge them that. I mean, it's really the height of hypocrisy to turn around and say, especially to India and China, you can't develop in the way we did.

But the British, the United States, France, Germany, for us to be doing what we have done over the last 5, 10, 15 years in the name of climate change, while China is bringing on hundreds of coal power stations every year, is preposterous. And I'm glad that Trump came out and said it as bluntly that he did.

I mean, that is a perfect example of what I was just talking about, right? Which is that you look at the supposed problem that we face, and then you look at the solution, which is to change our light bulbs. It's so petty. I am one of those odd people who's not bothered by LED light bulbs. I don't like the mandate. But one thing I really, really loved, Megan, was the reversal of the EV mandate.

Electric vehicles, if people want to buy them without subsidies, that's fine. But they don't. The vast majority of people don't want this, which is why it's a mandate. Also, the Biden administration knows that the vast majority of people don't like this, which is why the Biden administration has lied about it, pretending. that it's not a mandate.

It's just a mechanism by which it will be illegal not to do it up to two thirds or 70% within 10 years, which is a mandate. The idea here is to make it unaffordable for car companies to produce gasoline. cars. Well, I may not care about light bulbs so much. I love gasoline cars. I'm something of a petrol head.

I am in that regard, part of a long tradition from my country of birth, England, and a long tradition of my adopted country, the United States. This is a place that people love to be able to choose whatever they want to buy. And what they want to buy is not electric vehicles. So that was a great moment yesterday as well.

Wow. You're At a slight disadvantage here, Megan, because you're talking to two men. And I do think that this is probably a predominantly female thing. And if it's not, we're not the sort of men who take pictures of ourselves all the time. I think I'm pretty comfortable saying that.

Of rich. How do you know Charlie? How can you say with confidence? I have known you for 12, 13 years. I have very rarely seen you at events with a phone stuck in your face, taking selfies. I mean, I agree with you. I agree with you. This is a strange thing. And the main reason that I have always thought that this is odd behavior is that when you get into that mindset of,

you stop enjoying the moment. I know that is a cliche, but it's true. Not just because you spend so much time taking pictures and posing for pictures, but because you're constantly thinking, how do I look? There's nothing wrong with trying to look nice. You should look nice, especially if you go to a ball. That's one of the points. It's not a criticism of that.

But if you take it to that extent, you're actually not going to have any fun. So I've never quite understood this. I am very slightly, I'm 40, I'm very slightly too old for it. I think this kicked in... Three or four years.

That's very true. That's very true. But you know, I also was lucky in that I very slightly missed the point at which my entire childhood and college years were filmed, which would not have been a very good thing for me. I don't have a portrayal on the internet of me being 17.

No, I do. There is a photograph of me at a music festival when I was 18 years old, semi-passed out, which is in a vault and will stay there. I'm glad I don't have 300 more of them.

And no doubt my constitution will end ineligibility for office, which would be probably a bigger hurdle. But no, I just I don't understand it. There's a certain narcissism about it that is inexplicable. And as you say, she's older than I am and she's married or about to be married to Jeff Bezos. I find it bizarre.

You like the hat? Yeah. You didn't like it? Me and you, Megan. I loved it. I didn't like it.

Yeah, there's a great Bill Burr segment about this, so I'd encourage your listeners to go look up. And it is a strange development in First Lady-dom when they get involved in politics. She's a good first lady. I'll be honest with you. It's not something I've thought a great deal about. I do think her hat was exquisite. So I'm on your side on this. The outfit was great. I think it's very classic.

I mean, it's got that 20s, 30s look. It could be on the front of a ladies magazine from a PG Woodhouse novel. And that's a compliment. I thought it was absolutely terrific. You've ruined it for me now by saying that the Hamburglar would wear a similar hat. Now that's all I'm going to think of.

Did you hear how Melania Trump backed off just a little bit because the sword was...

He is a hero to them. I just want to look at that salute that he gave again. Just if anybody missed it, we'll just show it again. He's just wrapped up here. You can hear the. They're. All right. So we just we just showed that we just showed that. Right. It was quick. I think our viewers are smart and they can take a look at that. But it certainly was.

It's not something that you typically see in American political rallies. Put it that way. No, no. It was not something that you usually would see.

Yeah, so Chris Murphy asked about it this morning in Elise Stefanik's hearing. Bill Kristol is now... riffing on it you know it it's an amazing thing as rich says because i don't know what the idea is supposed to be here so let's assume that it's a nazi salute so why what why why would he do that well what is the aim to signal on cnn that they are what I mean, it's a silly idea.

It's unfortunately an indicator that the press has not learned anything. And that's what surprised me about it. I would have thought after this election that there would have been more than two hours between the inauguration of Donald Trump and the return to that sort of silliness. But there weren't. This came straight back.

This is now the conversation piece for a particular sort of resistance type. And now you have a second day of it from people who really should have spent the time and thought whether or not they wanted to jump on this bandwagon. And the fact that Chris Murphy, one day later, in a controlled setting like the United States Senate, chose...

To bring this up, to ask Elise Stefanik about it, on the record, in a hearing that is supposed to be about her nomination, suggests to me that they are essentially irredeemable. That the people who have got themselves into this mindset cannot get out of it. I do not mean people who dislike or criticize Donald Trump.

I mean the people who have never been able to distinguish between Trump as he actually exists and Trump as they have projected him from the beginning as this Hitler-esque figure. I mean, to borrow from what Rich just said about YMCA, It is extremely surprising that that song went from what it was in 1977 to what it is now.

It's not 100% surprising that Donald Trump would pick it up though, because he's the campest president we've ever had. He is camp. Donald Trump is a camp theater kid. He is not Adolf Hitler. There are many, many things to criticize him for. I do so. I've done so on this show. I will continue to do so.

But the idea that he and Elon Musk are secret Nazis, that they're trying to send secret... I mean, you know, there was this weird movement that coalesced on the right around Trump at the end of his first term, and then especially in the aftermath of the election. QAnon. It was stupid conspiracy theory, bizarre internet phenomenon. Well, the left has their own version, which others call blue anon.

I think David Harsanyi wrote a book about this. This is blue anon. I mean, this is lunacy conspiracy theories, except that instead of being in the fringes of the internet reported on in the press, it's representatives of people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Chris Murphy and Bill Kristol and the anchors at CNN.

And they are not going to do very well over the next four years if this is their habit still.

us back before Roe v. Wade was enacted, because we're not going back. We're not going back.

Yeah, and you know why that is a big deal? It's not because we're talking about it or because it's facile or even because it's defamatory, although all of those three things are true. It's because I assume that at some point in the future, the American left wants to win again and advance its agenda. And this is just not the way... to do it.

And not just because there's been a vibe shift, as people keep saying, perhaps there has, but because this distracts from criticisms that might be made of Donald Trump and his agenda that could be persuasive to Americans, that will at least be necessary for the Democrats to get off the map. And I don't think they've quite worked that one out.

The little bubble that they live in is not just silly, but it's really hurting them and their ability to project politically. Chris Murphy is supposed to be exercising his duty as a senator to evaluate whether or not Elise Stefanik deserves his vote. Now, of course, we all know for various partisan reasons that he's going to vote against her.

But if those comments are aired on television or if they make it down into the newspapers of the general public, they would do nothing. You really think there are people out there who are looking at the new administration and wondering if they're secret Nazis who are persuadable that Elon Musk deliberately did a Roman salute? It's nonsense.

But there are things that both because we have a divided country, people have different ideological views, and because Trump will make mistakes and do things that are illegal or a bad idea that could be pushed out into the voters and be useful to the Democrats. That's not one of them, but it's crowding it out today. That's what they've decided to do.

today, right in the middle of a bunch of Senate hearings, right in the middle of a bunch of executive orders, many of which really represent profound policy change, and right in the middle of a bunch of pardons that probably, although I agree with Rich that they're not going to have a huge effect politically, are probably not that popular. So what are they talking about?

They're talking about whether or not Elon Musk did a Nazi salute, which nobody thinks he did, and really makes you sound very stupid if you say allowed. And I just find that baffling.

Right, so when Trump was sworn in yesterday, I said to my wife, I said, we're now going to get... a whole litany of really annoying people saying annoying things that they didn't during the Biden years. And she said, well, what sort of thing are you thinking of? And I said, I don't know.

But every day, the last Trump administration, there was something that was profoundly stupid or annoying that someone said. And then within 24 hours, we've got perfect examples of this that I couldn't have remembered or imagined. But Elon Musk is a Nazi doing a Nazi salute. And he's lectured in a church service by a female Episcopalian about transgender children.

That is exactly what happens when Trump is president. This is a free floating thought. Why is it that people on the left who think that they are the great friends of illegal immigrants can only talk about them like that? They only ever talk about them as people who do menial tasks. They say they pick things and clean things. And that's the only thing that seems to come to mind as a defense.

I don't agree with illegal immigration. I want us to crack down on it very strongly. But I would feel a bit weird if I talked about other people like that. That was their only role in the world.

That's not the argument. I mean, that's such a... That's such a dispiriting argument. The argument is they're people, but they came into the country illegally and they shouldn't. And we have control over our borders and the people who live here get some say over who joins them. That's the argument for having borders, that borders make a nation.

The argument is not, well, who's going to do all the menial work? But even a priest or bishop or whatever she is said that. It's so weird to me. They need to work on that.

Yeah, as you know, Megan, I'm a huge fan of Vivek's and I can't imagine a circumstance in which he would get on somebody's nerves or make them want to exile him to the governorship of Ohio, which seems to be his next aspiration.

I wrote that piece about him three years ago. I stand by it. He still comes across like that. The only thing I would add is I do wonder if there was a more substantive side to it. I do wonder if he perhaps had different ideas about the administration than Trump or than Elon. It's a very broad coalition. It's a coalition that has managed to bring in

Republicans across the spectrum, but also Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard and others. And Vivek has a lot of ideas of his own. Some of them are good. And I wonder whether he ever played his hand in advancing them. I mean, this is a a problem you have, an inevitable problem, when you put lots of people who've been very successful and who are very intelligent together.

And Vivek is a very intelligent man, like Elon Musk is. And how many days do you think it would take for a room filled with Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Elon Musk before they started to get irritated with each other? I mean, it's almost inevitable.

Always.

Well, a lot happened in the past three days, right? We had, uh, Joe Biden's absolutely bizarre exit from the presidency, not just the pardons yesterday, but his declaration of a 28th Amendment that doesn't exist and his refusal to enforce the TikTok bill he signed. Then we had a whirlwind inauguration day.

with a whole bunch of executive orders, most of them good, most of them welcome, a couple of which I think are illegal. And then Trump's own pardons last night of pretty much everyone involved with January 6th, so it really is, a time for news. I did notice certain journalists complaining that there was too much news for them to cover. But of course, it must be quite the transition from them.

They took four years off.

Yeah, I mean, that was just preposterous. It's a very weird side trend in our politics at the moment, which is progressives trying to unionize everything as if they're coal miners, people who work in congressional offices or newspapers talking about the travails of their day. They need a 32-hour week. But anyway, so an enormous amount happened.

It was odd because at one level, there was a massive amount of change yesterday. You saw the shifts in policy, legitimate shifts in policy of areas that have been delegated to the president by Congress on sex, as in sex versus gender, as you say, on energy, on foreign policy. on immigration. But then there was some continuity.

I love Scott, but I hate that show.

Yeah, well, you go up and you appeal it. And just, Megan, one reason this is so absurd. Well, first of all, it's just another case, right, where they come up with a meme, a catchphrase that they repeat over and over again, and they hope they'll make reality, right? We saw this all during the campaign. Kamala Harris is joyful. Everyone says joy, and she's joyful.

And you hope that actually will make her joyful or people think she's joyful. Right, Brat. Same thing here, constitutional crisis, like Trump. It's last 24 hours. The memo clearly went out and everyone's saying constitutional crisis. But when they said that Trump was an existential threat to democracy for a year or two, I thought they were talking about he'd suspend congressional elections.

You know, he tried to stay for a third term. It turns out just carrying back foreign aid. That's that's the constitutional and offering to federal employees.

Yeah. So the Congress did not say, we have specifically appropriated money for a DEI program in Serbia, right? If they said that, that would not have gotten through Congress. So it's executive discretion to begin with on whether you're going to spend money on a Serbian DEI program, right? So if the executive made that call without Congress specifically commanding it,

Why can't a new president, a new executive make the opposite call? Right. So they want to play this game where one side can do it and has discretion, has executive authority and the other side doesn't. And of course, that should be intolerable. No one should be willing to play that game. And Trump and Elon aren't.

Right. And he supposedly can't do anything about it, even though he was elected in part to roll back this sort of insanity that's infected our government. And just the left's idea, you know, we all believe in promoting American ideals abroad, right? But they think our ideals are gender ideology and anti-racism and DEI.

This goes to a much more minor but important symbolic issue, whether we're going to fly any flag above our embassies and facilities or Overseas, except for the American flag. And they've flown all sorts of Black Lives Matter flags and various gay pride flags or versions of the gay pride flag because they think that is what this country is about in some sense at its root. And it's just not.

So I support funding HIV medicines. It's good. It doesn't cost us very much. And it does help our image abroad. But the rest of this stuff is just total nonsense. It's poisonous. It's wrong. It creates the wrong image of America abroad.

And again, unless Congress has specifically stipulated that this is what you're going to spend it on, Trump is fully within his rights saying, no, we're going to promote our image or help people in some other way. Now, again, I don't think he can just zero out USAID on his own.

He's going to have to spend a lot of this money or most of it, but they're objecting to him redirecting money that he has a right to.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. Well, given the alternatives, what would you fight on? Would you really, you want to fight on men competing in female sports or you want to fight on four and eight? I don't think either are great fights. But by the way, the last three weeks have been the best three weeks the right has had in the cultural war in 50 years.

One, because a lot of what Trump is doing is going along with the grain of what was already a backlash against some of this insanity. His election itself was a permission slip for institutions like Meta to say, you know, we don't like this woke ideology. It's kind of forced on us. We don't want it anymore. And he's using the hook of federal funding to turn some of this stuff around.

So that's been amazing. And he took a small democratic approach to this election. I'm going to tell people what I want to do. And then if they approve it and elect me, I'm going to do it. And even if at the margins people aren't excited about everything, they do appreciate that directness and that kind of approach.

And we're restoring the water flow from those showers. What was the famous Bill Clinton line? People would rather you be strong and wrong than weak and right. And a lot of this stuff, Trump's strong on, plus he has popular backing.

Thanks for having us. Thank you.

No, no, of course not. It's just it's absurd to hear Democrats complaining about a hostile power grab of the executive branch by the chief executive who is elected to be the chief executive, who is elected to administer his administration and has every right.

Presidents have done this from time immemorial to have informal advisers or people close to him review how the government's working and advise them. Now, Elon Musk is a little bit more than that. He's an actual government employee, right? He's a special government employee. And it's more than just a think tank the way we thought maybe Doge would be.

I mean, it's really an action squad that's going in and doing things. So the executive has a lot of discretion. He can fire people that he wants. He can redirect resources if Congress isn't very specific about how they're going to be spent, which applies to most of these U.S. AID funds. So... And as you point out, he's mostly being delayed, right?

Congress is just – sorry, the courts are just looking at this. And we've all sort of now accepted like the Elon Musk pace of things. Like if it's delayed a week, it's a terrible defeat because everything needs to move fast. But in the scheme of things – Things are still moving incredibly quickly, even with these little delays from the court. So you're right.

If he defies a court order, we'll have a constitutional crisis. I don't see why he would feel impelled, compelled to do that. I think he'd just fight this stuff out in the courts, and we will eventually have a big dispute over it. Because when Congress is not very specific, there's a lot to give in terms of how you spend the money. But whether you spend the money, that's a different question.

And you've got to spend a lot of it. You just can't zero it out when Congress has said, no, you're going to spend $40 billion. But Russ Voigt and others have a theory that the – The impoundment act that Congress passed in the Watergate era is unconstitutional, and they want a test case to go challenge that.

But that's – again, it's the tectonic plates of the two branches rubbing up against each other, and there's tension and there's give there, and you're going to need a determination by the courts on that eventually. But the idea that just we're in a constitutional crisis –

because some federal employees have been placed on leave and courts are examining whether the executive has that authority or not. He does, but that's not a constitutional crisis.

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We got it.

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I want to weep for my country. It's just, it's horrible. There are no words for how terrible this is and how terrible, more terrible it could have been. I mean, we were a centimeter, how far away from President Trump's head being blown off at a rally on live television.

And these are moments, Megan, the reason why assassinations fascinate people, one of the reasons, history telescopes down to inches and seconds, right? If JFK's driver had sped up rather than slow down to see what was happening after the first one or two shots, JFK would have survived that assassination attempt.

If the Archduke Ferdinand, one, they threw a bomb at him, which didn't work, if he just said, we're not doing anything else, but he had kind of a Trump-like spirit, he's like, We're going through this whole ceremony in Sarajevo. I don't care.

And when he was heading back, actually when he went to the hospital to see the people hurt from the bomb, if the car had not turned, made a wrong turn down a narrow street that it couldn't get out of, that it happened to be that Gabriel Princip, one of the assassination team, was just standing there not knowing what to do, was standing right there at that moment, he would have lived.

And all of history would have been different. That was the most consequential assassination in world history. But that moment of Trump... pumping his fist shows What a sense of the moment, right? We get in fender benders where your head, you know, goes back a little bit and you're kind of shocked. You don't know what happened to you or, you know, it takes a little while to get your senses.

To know that what that moment called for was strength and reassuring his supporters. When you're right, how does he know? The Secret Service thinks the threat's been neutralized. That's why they're picking him up. How does he know, right? He's just been inches from being killed. How does he know that that is an image that will live throughout American political history?

Yeah. So high politics is about, you know, it's about policy and ideas. But a lot of it's about emotion. And this is a guy, you know, one reason we couldn't stop him when we tried in the primaries in 2016 is he understood a crowd. He understood the moment. He got feeling and could play off of it. And this is just the very pinnacle of this. That was just an epic reaction.

And again, it will never fade. be forgotten, and what you opened with on the rhetoric. Who knows who the shooter was? But if you literally think he's Hitler, that's what they're telling us, right? The president of the United States incumbent is telling us that, and maybe in not so many words. What's the proper reaction? Just voting against him and hoping things turn out right?

If you take it seriously, I think we've learned a lot of Democrats actually don't take it seriously. But unfortunately, a lot of people do. If you take it seriously, What do you do if it's existential for American democracy, for our system of government, our way of life? What do you do? Maybe you do whoever that apparent shooter on the rooftop, maybe you do what he did.

Yeah, so all the professionals say, and it just seems as though just watching as an amateur, their reaction to this was pitch perfect. I mean, they immediately go on Trump. They're protecting him with their bodies, which is an inherently moving act, putting themselves on the line. But there are going to be questions. According to Twitter, who knows? Things are going to change.

We're going to learn. More, you know, as we speak, you know, just during this segment, probably, we're learning more. But how is it... There are indications that people are pointing to this guy on the rooftop, and he got the shots off before the Secret Service got him. Maybe it was unavoidable. Who knows? But there are going to be a lot of questions.

So it looks like the reaction was a Secret Service success, but I think there'd be questions about how this guy was able to get within range. And initially, it seemed like there's some speculation. Maybe it's a BB, because, you know... When you get shot in your ear, it's not just a little blood, right? It's a horrible event. And it seems as though no one else was hurt.

But now, of course, we've gotten reports of other people in the crowd tragically hurt. We've seen that video of the Trump supporter who was there and his emergency room doctor, I believe, was trying to save someone with a grievous head wound and didn't. So this was a furious fascination. attempt.

And if anyone comes this close to being killed that's under Secret Service protections, there are going to be a lot of critical questions afterwards.

Well, it continues the theme of this race, right? They've been completely in the tank for Kamala Harris and the moderators on the debate stage were completely in the tank for Kamala Harris. And you just, you knew where the night was going when we got the first fact check when Trump was talking about abortion and was talking about, he misspoke in this instance.

He got it right later when he said the West Virginia governor He meant the former Virginia governor had talked about you can have abortions after birth, right? And he didn't say any state has abortions after birth. He just said the governor had said this, which is a correct statement. And then he's fact-checked by saying, Mr. Trump, there's no state in America that has abortion after nine months.

Actually, there are a few instances in Minnesota. He was correct about that as well. But this is the point. The fact-check was incorrect, right? And this is why... debate moderators shouldn't fact-check. The CNN moderators did not fact-check because what you think the fact is in that moment may be subjective, you may be wrong, and you're tilting the playing field.

And certainly to fact-check one candidate and never fact-check the other. She did the Charlottesville lie that both sides are fine people lie, no fact-check. She did the bloodbath lie. He clearly didn't mean that the country is going to be, there are going to be riots in the street if he's not elected. It was an economic statement. No fact check. So the moderators were a disgrace.

It's one of the reasons Trump seemed on defensive a lot of the night. One was he took a lot of bait from Kamala Harris that he didn't need to. The other was the horrendous moderation.

But Emily, what you point out gets to the insanity of it. If she was going to be strictly accurate in her fact check, she would have said, well, it's not technically an execution because you're not affirmatively killing the child. Instead, after the child's born, you're just giving the child comfort care and not the medical care that might be necessary to save him or her. That's an opinion, right?

That's a debate answer. But instead, they do it under the guise of a fact check, which gives it this authority it doesn't deserve that they're using that – by the grace of them sitting there as moderators. It's a total abuse of their role.

Totally. I don't know how he possibly could have improved on that performance, substantively, tonally, just everything in terms of the message he was driving home. He brought it back to the economy and the American dream and how we need to revive it. He constantly made the point that Kamala Harris is in power now, and why hasn't she done all these wonderful things that she's promising?

The only thing that was difficult for him, I think, was the January 6th thing right at the end. That's not his fault. Donald Trump has created that vulnerability, but he deflected really deftly there as well by getting it on to to censorship. So I'm not sure when I've seen a better debate.

Maybe, I don't know, I have no use for him, obviously, because my politics are opposite, but maybe Barack Obama at his height in 2008. But this was just an extraordinary performance, a stellar performance. I'm not surprised that he was great because we've kind of seen it out on the campaign trail and in various interviews with hostile interviewers. But I was a little surprised at how pathetic

Tim Waltz was. Came out of the gate nervous, you know, hemming and hawing. And then just the way he looked when he wasn't speaking on camera. He looked nervous. He looked sad. He looked befuddled. He kind of looked like the kid in the back of the classroom that can't keep up with the lecture and is desperately trying to take notes. It was just a terrible look.

I don't think it was a great debate. It was painful to watch by the end. The argument over whose golf game is better and who has better handicap. And if the mics hadn't been cut, it probably would have descended into what the first debate in 2020 was like. So I agree with you that that helped Trump. But Biden was terrible, like nightmarishly bad.

You know, we both had a lot of experience with Roger Ailes, who is a TV genius, if nothing else. And he always said, you know, watch it with the sound down. And as soon as Trump, sorry, Biden walked out before he said anything, you're like, oh, my. Gosh, if this guy's president of the United States, it looked like he was going to barely make it to the podium.

It's the one thing they told the truth about the whole campaign.

He had this blank and confused look on all the split screens when he wasn't saying anything. And then when he talked, his voice was incredibly frail and weak. They're saying apparently getting out that he had a cold. I don't know. Maybe he did have a cold. But if he did, he should have said immediately, oh, excuse my voice. I have a cold. And then there was the incoherence.

You know, not every answer, but a lot of the answers just they started OK. And then they faded into something just a jumble. You know, the beat Medicare. We finally beat Medicare answer towards the beginning was maybe the foremost example of this. So it was a debacle for Joe Biden. I think Trump was, you know, about half the debate was was very good.

I think he got overheated at moments and drawn into things he probably shouldn't have. But he had the better night by default, if nothing else.

Bizarre. I mean, the only word for it is bizarre, right? I mean, what is sometimes he's mumbly and confused. Sad, depressing. Yes, that's a good word. I mean, this is hard. Unrecoverable.

Yeah, but this isn't really news. It just has brought it home more starkly. And it kind of makes you think, what were they thinking, right? They didn't need to agree to debates. It would have been embarrassing. The Trump camp would have said, look, he's running scared. He can't do it. But it'd be better to have people saying you can't do it rather than going out and demonstrating you can't do it.

And, you know, nine o'clock at night for this man now, it's like one in the morning. And Emily's point is exactly right. This is after a week of preparation. This isn't like a president of the United States that we've traditionally seen that doesn't do well in the first debate because they're not prepared and they're not ready for it and they take it too casually.

No, this is a guy who's been doing nothing else. And probably all day today, he was sleeping with cucumber slices over his eyes, and this is the best they could get out of him. And these moments, because they're weird, maybe they're a little funny, probably more sad, as you put it, but they're weird.

So they'll be played over and over again, and they will be the main impression out of the debate, no doubt.

Yeah, that was fascinating. Look, there are two options, right? Either medical malpractice, where they just let this grow without knowing about it because they didn't do the routine tests that almost everyone would do, and certainly the President of the United States would do, or they knew and were treating it and didn't disclose and lied about it, right?

And they deserve zero benefit of the doubt. If they'd been honest about things and what happened hadn't happened, the vast conspiracy, this would be a 5%. minute footnote on your show, right? We'd say, it's a big story. Former president of the United States has this stage four cancer. We wish him the best and we move on.

But it's much bigger than that because obviously there was a conspiracy to hide what we could see, lie about what we could see with our own eyes. So why wouldn't they lie about something that they didn't have to disclose? I think that's a big question hanging over all this.

Correct. And it was obvious. We saw it. I literally held my breath every time he walked up and down those Air Force One steps. And eventually they went to smaller steps, but they're still dangerous for someone in that condition. I remember I was on the set. for my sins of NBC at some point, and off air, I said to a prominent Democrat who's still prominent on MSNBC, I think he could die.

I think he could die on the steps of Air Force One. And this person said, yep, you're absolutely right. But never gave any indication on air that this person believed that, right? So all this, I agree with you, the Tapper book, even if you're annoyed with Jake Tapper, and CNN was part of the cover-up, it's still extremely important. The details are telling.

But I would say all this is shocking, but not surprising. If you told me a year ago that Democrats lost because either Biden ran again or got out too late, and then you told me that after that he became the most hated man in the country and there are all these revelations about stuff that insiders did to cover it up and things they knew about how really debilitated

he was, and that there was a diagnosis of real serious cancer, kind of a snap diagnosis, dropped on us shortly after he left office, I would have said, of course, of course, yeah. All that's happening and all that is going to happen. And sure enough, it has come to pass.

We don't want to know.

I mean it's so hard to tell with him, right? Whether he's making something up, whether he's confused, whether it's just poor syntax, whether it's his natural tendency to exaggerate and put himself in a situation that he's not. Yeah. The worst example of this is – Another distinct possibility.

Yeah, meeting with Gold Star families and saying the same thing happened to me when it didn't with Bo. So you just don't know. But on the not wanting to know potentially at the PSA test, that is part of the Tapper book, right? That they didn't want to have a cognitive test for understandable reasons because they didn't want to know and didn't want to hide it.

But the interview with her was, in effect, a cognitive test.

When you're forgetting years, all of us get fuzzy on dates, but when you're forgetting really key years in terms of your own life, in terms of losing your treasured son, in terms of this quadrennial cycle that's been important to you your whole adult life, right, when elections happen and when people are inaugurated, that's really all you need to know. And the idea he just had a bad day,

With the debate with Trump and the Her report and was fine all the rest of the time, was always completely crazy. And he may have had better days and worse days. But when you're having a day like that, when you just can't get the years straight, I always thought the killer question someone should ask at a press conference is, how old are you? Because I doubt he knows.

And that's one of the key questions a neurologist will ask when they're asking basic things to try to determine whether you might have dementia or not.

That he knew most of the time.

Yeah. We don't know what happened here, but if you're a damage control specialist and the Biden family comes to you, how can we step on this book? What would you recommend, right? If you had this diagnosis in your back pocket, so to speak, I don't want to seem crass about it, but you release it on Sunday, right, to step on a Tuesday release.

That would be the exact ideal timing to try to create a counter narrative. So, again, can't say with certainty that's what happened. But if it did that, that's how you exactly how you play it, which is a quick follow up on it, Rich. Yeah.

Yeah. So I would think it'd be more sympathy play. But to the point of character, that's behind all this. Right. And in Biden's defense, a lot of times high level politicians, they just lie about their health. They do. You know, Wilson did it. FDR and people around FDR did it. JFK did it. Paul Songis did it.

who is a Democratic senator from Massachusetts who had a pretty good run in the 1992 primaries against Bill Clinton. Some people thought he'd win at some point, lied about his cancer. He had a recurrence right before the New York primary. He was diagnosed and he was dead three years later. They just lie. So I think Biden easily fell into that.

And it was very hard for him also to let go of this presidency that he's grasped for his entire life. So if you just think of recent presidents, I don't think

Either the Bushes, whatever else you think of them, would have lied about their health or not made the decision if they really would have had the self-awareness to realize if they were in Biden's state, I got to go for the good of my party and my country. Jimmy Carter wouldn't have lied about this. But Joe Biden, yes. He would, and I don't put anything past him.

And look, he suffered terrible things in his life. We all should acknowledge that, should admire his perseverance. But he was made into a saint just because he was running against Donald Trump, and he was never that. And one reason I was very bullish on Trump's chances in 2024 before the polling really showed it is I just had a deep sense that no matter what, Joe Biden was going to F it up.

because he's an eff up. Now, he won in 2020. Pass off to him for that. But I just knew in my bones he was going to eff it up, and he did it royally.

Yeah, and this of all weeks, we're going to put it all aside right now, right when the book is being released? Come on. And to Charlie's point, it wasn't just evident in 2022. It was evident in 2019 when Joe Biden actually had to stand up with fellow Democrats and debate them at night. He was kind of okay, but he was also alarmingly bad and incoherent at times.

And one of his fellow candidates, Julian Castro, pointed it out, took a couple shots at his memory. Then he was very quickly kind of left the stage, never to be heard of again. But this hasn't been a mystery for five or six years. You can just see it in front of your eyes.

And it was a conspiracy against the American public and the public interest because this handover of Joe Biden when he was going to be in a wheelchair in his second term and he was going to die of natural causes, no one would want to see that, or just give up. It would not have been clean. It would have been traumatic. It would have been messy.

It would have involved probably a constitutional crisis in some form or another and involved someone who, yes, she would have been on the ticket and won, but wouldn't have been elected president of the United States becoming president. This was all... terrible. And he wasn't suited to be president in that first term, right? We danced through the raindrops.

It was a terrible presidency, but there was no crisis over the Taiwan Strait or something that he just wasn't up to handling it because he wasn't up to anything anymore. But this is one of the biggest scandals of our time. And just because we have sympathy for Joe Biden,

just because we wish the best for him and his family, we want him to have the, he can't fully recover from this, but have the best health outcome he can, doesn't mean we need to stop the conversation that we're just beginning to have.

It's so maddening. It's so symptomatic of the whole story because the guy who was doing his job and doing it with integrity was slimed and lied about. And part of the point of lying about him is that he couldn't respond, right? in the congressional hearing he did. But otherwise, he's mute as the prosecutor.

And if you read the transcript or listen to the tapes, he described Biden as a well-meaning old man. Well, certainly, Herr was a well-meaning prosecutor. This isn't a killer, as Donald Trump often puts it. He wasn't a shark. He wasn't trying to nail Joe Biden to the wall.

He was gently trying to elicit this information from a meandering old man who couldn't come back to the point very often or remember basic things And it's her who's often saying, well, why don't we take a break, Mr. President? So he's not trying to nail him to the wall at all.

And it's really a public service to have this audio out belatedly because a transcript – transcripts very often don't entirely do justice to a video or an audio recording. But this transcript is miles away from what the audio –

uh portrays right because you can't get the length of the pauses in the transcripts you can't get how painful it is to listen as that grandfather clock is tick tock tick tock and he's saying nothing and then he comes back with a whispery voice and he's bringing up beau right her her's not bringing up beau and then very often he can't complete his thoughts so he just says anyway and And stops.

So this is this is the performance of a man who, yes, if you got him in the jury box, probably no one would prosecute him because he'd clearly be out of it. But a guy who is not suited to be president of the United States. And we just had a glimpse of the truth via that her report. They couldn't handle it and did everything they could to lie and smear him.

Yeah, and Bob Baer, his lawyer, had to occasionally pop in and said, sir, I'm just reminding you, you can't remember. Remember? You can't remember. Don't say anything except for you don't know.

Yeah, and the clock just adds to that feeling, right? You just see the lobby of the retirement home. where they're sitting.

It's kind of fun, right? It's kind of fun. You can take an hour and a half of that, right? You wouldn't want to be around that person all the time. But of course he's going to make the shot perfectly, right? He's going to out mongrel warriors with his archery.

Another thing I loved about Biden, he'd oftentimes, he's this 80-year-old guy with legs like toothpicks and could fall down at any moment if he goes over the wrong rug, like challenging people to fight, you know, like the time magazine interviewer. I don't know who this interviewer was, but I assume he could have taken Biden in a fight.

But at the end of the interview, Biden took umbrage at something this guy had asked. It's like, you want to take this outside, man? Yeah. Well, he nearly did it.

So this is not something he was carrying around or that he was hiding. I just, again, want to commend the people who cut their tongues off and said, get well soon, you know? Because I think that it just... It did something for me.

i guess thumbs up rich good like i guess that's where there is a good barometer for where the like real committed leftists are going to go yeah absolutely no discussion of the underlying scandal just just sympathy and obviously you can do both as we've discussed and in terms of being very open about his condition one this is newsworthy any former president united states would would announce something of this nature but two real transparency would have been joe biden giving a national speech in 2023 we

we're thinking about this hard. We don't know whether they should run again. Joe's really not the same as he has been. He's often confused, has trouble walking, but we think he's done a really good job. What do you, the American public, think? Of course, they didn't do that. They did everything to hide it and to hold on to power.

They were party to and the prime movers behind a hideous lie that put Maybe some of the people around them really wanted him to stay and were active participants or very willing participants in this. But once you're in decline such that you can't really – serve in the office anymore. But saying you're going to run again, it puts everyone in a terrible position.

Doesn't excuse Chris Murphy or any of these characters, but they were all in a terrible position because the natural partisan instinct, right, is to not do something to hurt your party. And just saying the truth about Joe Biden would have hurt their party. So they all ended up complicit one way or the other in this conspiracy. Yeah, the center of which was Joe and Jill Biden.