The Administration’s Extraordinary Display of Bait and Switch | Explainer

0:00 The thing that that is just sticking in my craw, if you will,

0:04 today is that the Senate Republicans introduced

0:08 what they want for the budget reconciliation measure.

0:13 Now, the Remember that the because of the Senate filibuster,

0:21 there are And remember the filibuster essentially simply

0:24 says that you can't make senators start stop talking.

0:27 So, they could theoretically talk forever and nothing would ever get voted on.

0:32 So, there's a system for getting rid of people talking, but it takes 60 votes.

0:36 It's called cloture.

0:37 Takes 60 votes.

0:38 And what that essentially means is that the Senate has

0:41 to Even though it's supposed to be a majority institution,

0:44 it really needs 60 votes to get anything through.

0:48 And I'm not going to argue about that today.

0:50 Just have that in the back of your minds because the Senate

0:52 realized quickly that it had to exempt certain things from that system,

0:59 or nothing would ever get done in the Senate.

1:00 And so, one of the things that they exempted

1:03 were financial measures so that the government can be financed.

1:07 And what that means is you cannot

1:09 filibuster something like a budget reconciliation bill.

1:13 So, what the Republicans have done since

1:15 last year is they have used budget reconciliation.

1:18 And by the way, the Democrats do the same thing when they're in power,

1:21 but the Republicans have taken this to a fine art.

1:24 Because what they've done is they've thrown

1:26 everything they possibly can into a budget

1:29 reconciliation measure because they can pass

1:31 it without any Democratic votes at all.

1:35 The only requirement is that whatever they are

1:38 passing has to have something to do with financing.

1:41 And theoretically, there is a Senate parliamentarian who makes the decisions

1:45 about whether or not what they're putting in that bill are okay.

1:47 That's not binding, but people do tend to defer to the Senate parliamentarian.

1:53 [snorts]

1:52 Anyway, that's what's the what what measure they they advanced last night.

1:57 Yesterday evening.

1:59 Uh they put forward what they would like to see

2:03 in the budget reconciliation measure that they're working on right now.

2:08 And what's sticking in my craw, as I say,

2:11 is that one of the things in that budget reconciliation measure,

2:15 and I hope you're sitting down cuz this one is just so over the top,

2:21 is a billion dollars of taxpayer money for security features in the White House,

2:32 including Trump's proposed ballroom.

2:38 Remember that Trump tore down the East Wing

2:41 of the White House on October 20th of last year,

2:45 two days after the No Kings rally of October 18th.

2:49 It was pretty clearly just a toddler peak that he

2:52 was going to go ahead and knock down so, you know,

2:54 he had received a narcissistic injury by the fact so many people

2:57 turned out on October 18th to say they didn't want him in office.

3:01 So, he turned around two days later and hurt us.

3:04 Did something that he knew would really upset people.

3:06 He knocked down the East Wing of the White House.

3:09 But then, he sort of turned around and said, "Wait, wait, wait.

3:12 You don't have to worry because we're going to build this entirely

3:16 with private money." Which itself is a huge problem because what you

3:20 essentially saw was a number of very wealthy individuals or corporations using

3:25 that vehicle as a way to put money in Trump's pocket, essentially.

3:29 And But that was what he kept maintaining is that people who didn't um you know,

3:35 who didn't want the ballroom were being ridiculous because it was going

3:38 to be built for free and back and forth and, you know,

3:40 we didn't have to worry about it.

3:42 It was all going to be private money and so on.

3:45 Now, Senate Republicans are saying that they want to appropriate

3:51 a billion dollars of taxpayer money for that expletive ballroom.

4:00 That to me is in a way a bait and switch that looks

4:06 a lot like the Republican Party's ideology since the the 18 the 1980s.

4:14 And I wanted to go a little bit into that because one of the things

4:17 about being where we are in American politics

4:20 is that so much is happening so fast, it feels a lot like everything's shallow.

4:24 And by that, I mean I don't mean that it doesn't matter.

4:27 I mean that it's hard to tell why people are doing certain things.

4:31 And there are certainly things that are happening in politics

4:33 that don't on the surface seem to make any sense.

4:37 And it's important, I think,

4:39 to understand the ideologies that under which people are operating.

4:44 So, what happens is out of coming out

4:47 of World War II and the depression before it,

4:52 Americans of both parties, Democrats and Republicans,

4:55 take a look at the economic system of the 1920s

4:59 and a little bit before that and they say,

5:01 "You know, that really didn't go very well.

5:02 We had a global depression and we had a a world war,

5:07 so maybe we should think of something else." And this is where Franklin

5:12 Delano Roosevelt and the Democrats come in with what they called the New Deal.

5:17 And that actually came from a speech from FDR, who said,

5:20 "I pledge to the American people a new deal." That is the old deal

5:25 in which the government was arranged to benefit business and a few wealthy men,

5:30 as it was in the 1920s, was no longer going to work.

5:33 He was going to offer a new deal.

5:37 [snorts] And what that new deal did was it regulated business so that workers

5:41 were would get decent salaries and not have to work hideous hours.

5:45 And the business people couldn't pollute and, you know,

5:50 had had to actually work in ways that were good for the American public.

5:54 So, it regulated business.

5:55 It provided a basic social safety net so that um you know,

6:02 that actually comes from a sort of a a story.

6:04 It isn't even apocryphal.

6:04 It's a real story about a guy looking at his window

6:07 and seeing grandmothers eating out of trash cans and saying,

6:09 "Come on, we got to do better than that." But we

6:11 got a basic social safety net that protected women and children,

6:15 widows and children, and disabled workers, and protected laborers.

6:20 We got infrastructure like the Tennessee Valley Authority,

6:23 which uh provided electricity for the a part

6:26 of the country that had not had it before.

6:29 We got um the electricity.

6:31 We got some attempts to move toward health care.

6:34 We got um you know, these infrastructure systems that are going

6:38 to really take off after World War II under Dwight Eisenhower, primarily.

6:42 Um although the Democrats, of course, especially Lyndon Baines Johnson,

6:46 really go to town with that in the 1960s.

6:48 But it's really FDR who puts his stamp of approval

6:51 on it as a Republican with the um Interstate Highway.

6:54 If you've seen those signs on the Interstate Highway that are

6:57 like stars around them and it says the Eisenhower Highway,

7:01 um that's because he was instrumental in getting

7:03 the Interstate Highway Act put into place.

7:05 At the time, it was the largest public works program in the country.

7:09 So, you had regulation of business.

7:11 You had a basic social safety net.

7:13 You had infrastructure.

7:15 You had the protection of civil rights.

7:16 And FDR sort of noodles around with that, but it takes off under um Truman

7:22 and then really takes off under Eisenhower

7:24 and then going forward to LBJ in the 1960s.

7:28 And you also had, which I won't talk about at all today,

7:31 this attempt to create uh an an a rules-based

7:36 international order that would enable countries

7:39 to cooperate with each other in monetary stuff

7:42 and in trade and in educational and cultural fields,

7:47 but that it would also give them systems like the United Nations

7:50 and NATO to work out their differences and then NATO to backstop security.

7:56 So, you had this system coming out of World War II in which the government

8:00 took an active role in trying to hold the playing field level for everybody.

8:05 And we get in those years something called the Great Compression,

8:09 what economists call the Great Compression.

8:11 And what that means is that the income and the wealth of the people

8:15 at the very top and the people at the very bottom compress.

8:18 It's why they call the Great Compression.

8:20 You know, people start That doesn't mean that everybody's equal,

8:23 but it does mean that you no longer have the extremes

8:25 that you got in the Gilded Age and going into the 1920s.

8:29 Well, when Reagan uh rises and then when he's elected into office in the 1980s,

8:36 he argues for an entirely different kind of political economy.

8:41 He wants to change that whole system.

8:43 Because what he says is the government, first of all,

8:48 um using regulating business means that businessmen can't

8:52 run their lives the way they want to.

8:53 So, and can't run their businesses the way they want to.

8:55 So, they don't have liberty.

8:56 They don't have freedom.

8:58 So, he wants to get rid of that and he wants to get

9:00 rid of the taxes that are necessary to support that social welfare state.

9:04 Our [snorts] It isn't really a social welfare state,

9:06 the social welfare programs.

9:08 Uh because, of course, those require high taxes.

9:10 And under Eisenhower in the 1950s,

9:13 Eisenhower's Republican in the 1950s, you know,

9:16 so many people now look back to the 1950s as the halcyon days of our past.

9:20 Remember the top income tax bracket in the 1950s was 92%.

9:26 So, that it's actually um uh JFK who starts

9:30 to bring those things down in the early 1960s.

9:32 But what you get is you get Ronald Reagan picking up sort of a radical

9:37 idea that this use of taxpayer money in this fashion is a form of socialism.

9:44 That it's stealing our liberty.

9:46 And what he argues But But there's a real problem

9:48 because people for him because people really like that system.

9:51 They like having wage protection.

9:53 They like having clean air and clean water.

9:56 It's actually Nixon who's really behind that.

9:58 You know, that who's a Republican.

10:00 They like this system.

10:01 They like social security.

10:02 They like education making it easy to go to college

10:06 and making sure that we have Head Start and things like that.

10:09 They like civil rights.

10:10 That's actually popular.

10:11 Um and they like the idea of not having another world war.

10:15 So, one of the things that Reagan argues is

10:19 that if you start to cut taxes and regulations, what that will do is it will

10:24 just sort of jump-start the economy extraordinarily well.

10:28 And that will mean that even though people

10:30 are paying less taxes it less in taxes,

10:34 that you'll be able to keep those public programs because the economy will go so

10:39 hot that the taxes that still exist will

10:41 generate far more income than they had before.

10:44 And that what you really need to do to make an economy

10:47 boom is to focus on the supply side of the economy.

10:52 That is the people who are owning factories and who have

10:56 a lot of capital to invest in the economy versus the demand side,

11:01 the workers, the the people who the ordinary people who um you know,

11:07 the government after the depression would focus on because the they

11:11 believed that if you put money in the hands of those people,

11:14 they'd spend it and it would keep the economy growing.

11:17 Um so, you get this idea in the 1980s

11:20 that becomes firmly embraced by the Republican Party.

11:24 The the way to make the economy better

11:27 for everybody is to cut regulations and to cut taxes.

11:30 That's supply-side economics.

11:32 It also later on becomes known as neoliberalism,

11:36 which I'm not going to go into in right now.

11:37 But so, their idea is that this is how you really make stuff go.

11:41 But you know, from the very beginning, it didn't work.

11:44 You know, under Reagan when they said, "Hey,

11:46 we're going to cut all this stuff and here's

11:49 how the economy's going to boom." The government computers said,

11:52 "Actually, you're going to just explode the deficit." And so,

11:55 you know what they did?

11:56 They reprogrammed the computers.

11:58 Um rather than simply saying, "Oh,

12:00 we have a problem." Remember it those of you who are of an age like me,

12:03 you remember George H.W.

12:06 Bush calling Reagan's ideas voodoo economics because, you know,

12:10 most people said this is not going to work.

12:12 Well, in fact, uh what has happened since 1981,

12:17 since these this system went into effect, is,

12:20 you know, more than 50 trillion dollars has moved

12:23 from the bottom 90% of us to that top 1%.

12:27 You know, the system actually doesn't work for ordinary Americans,

12:30 but they kept selling it by saying, "Oh,

12:32 this is going to be really good for you.

12:33 This is going to be really good for you.

12:34 We're going to cut these taxes.

12:35 We're going to cut these regulations and everybody's going to do well.

12:38 A rising tide lifts all boats, remember?

12:44 When I look at the fact that you know,

12:47 Trump promised this ballroom was going to be funded privately and you know,

12:51 this is going to be this great thing thing for the American people.

12:54 And now they're turning around and saying, "Oh, by the way,

12:57 we need a billion dollars from you to make this happen." To me,

13:01 it just looks like supply-side economics.

13:03 You know, this idea that we're going to have this great thing.

13:05 We're going to cut regulations.

13:06 We're going to cut taxes and you're all going to do incredibly well.

13:10 But in fact, what happened was 50 trillion dollars,

13:13 more than 50 trillion dollars moved from that bottom 90% to the top 1%.

13:19 So, what do I actually mean by that?

13:21 And what does that look like nowadays?

13:24 So, last July, uh July 4th it was,

13:30 the Republicans passed what they called the one big beautiful bill act.

13:36 It also was a budget reconciliation bill.

13:40 So, they passed it without a single Democratic vote

13:42 and even still they lost a couple of Republicans.

13:44 So, J.D.

13:45 Vance, who was the vice president,

13:46 had to come break the tie in the Senate to pass this.

13:49 I mean, it was it was not a popular measure.

13:52 But that measure was a wish list for the Republicans.

13:56 They threw everything in it that they could.

13:58 And crucial to that were those tax cuts that Trump claimed that he

14:02 was going to give to corporations and to the very wealthy during the campaign.

14:06 And that's exactly what he did.

14:07 Huge tax cuts in that one big beautiful bill act

14:11 or the budget reconciliation bill or budget reconciliation act now.

14:17 And what are we seeing now?

14:19 They actually put that in place in such a way

14:23 that it the real hits from that bill wouldn't come till later.

14:27 With the idea that people wouldn't really notice what

14:30 was going on until after the midterms when they could

14:32 either blame it on the Democrats or it would be

14:34 too late for the the American people to do anything.

14:38 Well, those things are starting to show.

14:39 So, first of all, we've seen rural hospitals closing

14:43 um at a at really quite a clip because one

14:46 of the things that the one big beautiful bill

14:48 act did was it cut back on support for patients.

14:53 So, the ones, you know, the the the ones who keep the rural hospitals going.

14:58 But just uh in the last two days,

15:01 we've seen two things that to me were really egregious.

15:05 So, people like me, you can look back over my old files.

15:08 People like me pointed to the one big beautiful bill act and said,

15:12 "You're going to throw Americans off health care

15:16 and off of supplemental nutrition assistance." And the Republicans said,

15:21 "No, no, no, no, you're lying.

15:22 This is propaganda.

15:23 This is going to be so great for everybody.

15:25 We will move fraud away from the system.

15:28 But no, no, no, no, this is all going to be great for everyone." Well,

15:32 we learned uh earlier this week, uh I'm sorry, at the end of last week,

15:39 that so far uh about 20% of the people

15:43 who had been covered by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare,

15:47 have in fact dropped their health care because they no longer have the uh

15:53 health care supplements that uh the Republicans

15:56 cut from the one big beautiful bill act.

15:59 And that number expected to go up another 5%.

16:02 So, about 26% of Americans who had been

16:05 covered by the Affordable Care Act will not be.

16:08 They will not have health insurance.

16:10 So far, that's about 5 million Americans have lost their health insurance.

16:16 Then today and uh this week, I guess it's been,

16:19 um uh Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has been uh out in front

16:25 of the cameras talking about how under

16:27 her uh auspices at the Department of Agriculture,

16:32 43 million I'm sorry, 4.3, not 43.

16:36 4.3 million Americans have in her words

16:39 been lifted off uh supplemental nutrition assistance programs.

16:43 That is what we used to call food stamps.

16:45 Now it's known as SNAP.

16:48 Um and she says that they have been lifted lifted off

16:51 because uh they either were committing

16:54 fraud over the over supplemental nutrition.

16:59 Um or because the economy is so good, they don't need it any longer.

17:03 The reality is uh that in fact, the one big beautiful bill act cut

17:10 um about 186 billion dollars in federal spending.

17:17 It's about 20%.

17:18 From SNAP over 10 years.

17:20 That's according to the Congressional Budget Office.

17:23 And they made it so difficult to apply that people

17:25 are simply not able to fill out the paperwork.

17:28 They're not being able to to manage to get

17:30 into the system to get the supplemental nutrition they need,

17:34 the food they need um in a in a country where we

17:37 have people a lot of people living in in with food insecurity.

17:42 So, that's another place you're seeing this idea that oh,

17:46 the the um cutting taxes and cutting regulations is

17:52 going to just do just great stuff for the economy.

17:54 And look, we've lifted these people off food stamps.

17:57 Now, we've actually taken their food away from them is what we've done.

18:00 And it's important to remember that this is

18:02 an ideological position of the Republicans.

18:05 This is this is their ideology under which they are operating.

18:10 And um the now there's in the Republican Party, there's a split.

18:13 There now are a number of Republicans, the younger,

18:16 more even more radical Republicans who actually want to use

18:19 a very strong government to impose their will on people,

18:22 not to get rid of the government,

18:24 which is what the you know, the Reaganites and on wanted,

18:27 but rather to have a very strong government

18:28 that they can impose their will on other people.

18:31 And you see that aspect of the Republicans

18:35 in this budget reconciliation measure coming from the Senate.

18:39 Because if they are not going to be

18:42 funding the American people's health care or food,

18:46 um for example, uh what are they interested in funding?

18:50 Well, first of all, they're interested in taking I'm sorry,

18:53 this is just sticking in my craw.

18:55 A billion dollars of our tax money for security for that ballroom.

19:03 Um but what else are they funding?

19:07 They have proposed to fund Immigration and Customs

19:12 Enforcement or ICE and Customs and Border Protection.

19:16 Remember, that's the parent agency for Border Patrol.

19:19 Border Patrol was the agency that was overseen by Greg Bovino

19:24 that was so incredibly violent in Minneapolis and other places as well.

19:28 And ICE, of course, you you know about ICE.

19:31 So, um so they the if you remember,

19:34 the Republic the Democrats in the Senate refused

19:37 to fund um the Department of Homeland Security

19:41 until those two agencies were taken out

19:45 of the funding because they want to see reforms.

19:47 And those reforms, by the way, are not something new and dramatic.

19:51 They literally want those agencies to behave

19:55 the way they did before Trump got into office.

19:58 By doing things like not wearing masks as law

20:01 enforcement officers are not supposed to, but also

20:04 by doing things like having to have

20:06 a judicial warrant before they knock down someone's door.

20:09 And that, by the way, is absolutely uh the way that the Fourth

20:14 Amendment has been interpreted all along.

20:16 So, what the Trump administration is doing is crazy new and radical,

20:21 and that's the Democrats are simply saying,

20:23 "We want to go back to the system under which

20:26 we operated before you before Trump took office." But so,

20:31 they finally did a few days ago fund Homeland Security,

20:36 which is uh the Federal Emergency Management

20:39 Agency and um uh Transportation Security Administration.

20:43 And you know, there's a lot that Homeland

20:45 that Homeland Security does we want to keep funded.

20:47 Our Coasties, the Coast Guard, are in Homeland Security now.

20:50 And some people were getting paid,

20:52 and some people weren't getting paid at first,

20:54 and you know, they that is now funded.

20:56 But the Republicans want to fund ICE and Border Patrol through budget

21:02 reconciliation because they won't then have to make any reforms in it,

21:05 and they won't have to operate with the support of the Democrats.

21:09 Now, remember that ICE and Border Patrol are really unpopular.

21:13 I mean, among other things,

21:15 uh and I'm just not even going to make a list of them all,

21:17 but among other things, they shot and killed two American citizens who

21:21 were exercising peacefully exercising their right to protest.

21:27 So, um the but Senate budget reconciliation measure proposes,

21:33 and I hope you're sitting down,

21:35 72 72 72 billion dollars to fund ICE and Border Patrol,

21:46 which already got a huge package last year in the budget reconciliation.

21:51 ICE and Border Patrol through 2029.

21:57 Can you hear what they're doing there?

22:00 They are removing from the American people the ability to pressure

22:05 the government to force reforms to ICE and Border Protection.

22:09 I'm sorry, Border Patrol.

22:10 Well, Customs and Border Protection, but Border Patrol.

22:13 They are saying, "We are going to take this away from the American people who

22:18 at this point thoroughly disapprove of this administration,

22:22 thoroughly disapprove of the president,

22:24 and thoroughly disapprove of the Republicans.

22:26 We're going to take that out of their hands with our votes alone.

22:32 And we're going to pour money, yours and my tax dollars,

22:37 into ICE and Border Patrol for 3 more years,

22:41 and there's nothing you're going to be able to do about it." And then,

22:47 there is another layer to this.

22:50 And that is the administration went to war

22:54 in Iran without consulting Congress, as you know.

22:58 And they did so arguing that under the 1973 War Powers Act,

23:06 they had 60 days after notifying Congress to have to exercise this operation.

23:14 And remember the the War Powers Act 1973,

23:18 it's after Richard Nixon has bombed Cambodia secretly,

23:24 and Congress is trying to stop the president from doing things like that.

23:29 So, they passed the War Powers Act,

23:31 and what it says is that if there is an imminent threat,

23:34 which is why Trump and his people were

23:36 saying that Iran was an imminent threat even though

23:38 his own intelligence said they weren't going to have

23:40 a nuclear weapon for at least a decade.

23:43 If there's an imminent threat,

23:45 the president can operate without consulting Congress,

23:48 but he has to let Congress know what he's done within 2 days.

23:52 And then, within 60 days,

23:55 he either has to have congressional approval or he has to remove the troops.

23:58 He's got 30 days to remove the troops,

24:00 but they have to stop fighting and then got to pull out.

24:04 That deadline was May 1st.

24:07 And the administration said, they wrote a letter to Congress,

24:11 and I wrote about this, to both the Senate pro tem,

24:14 that the technical head of the Senate,

24:16 it's a long story, and the Speaker of the House, saying, um you know,

24:23 they put in writing that in fact the Iran war had terminated.

24:27 That was their word, terminated, on April 7th,

24:31 which is news to the our service members who are still sitting over there,

24:35 and to the American people,

24:36 and to anybody interested in the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz,

24:39 and anybody who is interested in the fact the US

24:42 did in fact fire on an Iranian ship on April 19th,

24:46 which last I checked was significantly after April 7th.

24:52 [snorts]

24:51 But they're arguing that once a ceasefire was declared, the clock started again.

24:58 So, he didn't So, Trump didn't actually have

25:00 to remove the troops uh with a 60-day deadline.

25:04 Well, first of all, that's not at all what the law says,

25:08 and this is um this is really an extraordinary power grab,

25:15 and I'm going to unpack that a little bit in just a second.

25:18 But let me finish with with what's going on in Iran right now.

25:21 So, um of course, now we've got this real

25:24 issue that the Strait of Hormuz is closed,

25:26 that the Iranians are um have taken control of it,

25:31 and they're not letting oil through except a little bit of it,

25:34 and that uh controls about 20% of the world's oil, which is a huge problem.

25:40 I mean, we're already seeing the issues at the gas pump,

25:42 but we're going to see a really,

25:43 really big price strike in the next uh several weeks

25:47 because oil is so expensive and oil and I mean,

25:50 if if you're looking at the price of diesel, which of course around here we are,

25:55 um if you're in a profession that uses diesel,

25:57 um the the prices for diesel are eye-popping.

26:00 And of course, it's trucks that run on diesel that carry our food to markets,

26:05 for example, and carry products around the country.

26:08 So, um so, right now that Strait of Hormuz is closed,

26:11 and what's happened is um the Trump administration has declared,

26:17 this is a little complicated, but the Trump administration declared a blockade.

26:21 And if you read the newspaper,

26:23 they're a little bit fuzzy on what's being blockaded.

26:26 And people are saying it's a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, but it's not.

26:30 It's a it's a blockade on the ports, the Iranian ports um of of Iran,

26:36 um so that they can't ships can't come and go from them.

26:40 Because what Trump is trying to do is he's trying to strangle Iran's economy.

26:45 And so, they're not letting ships in or out of Iranian ports.

26:50 At the same time that Iran looked at that and said, "Okay,

26:53 we're not we're not going to open up the Strait as long as you have done that.

26:56 You're as long as you've got a blockade on, we're

26:59 not going to open up the Strait." And just again, a blockade is an act of war.

27:04 Um I may have a rabbit hole there for you.

27:09 Uh but but a blockade is an act of war.

27:12 So, while Trump is sitting there saying,

27:14 "The war is over," he is literally engaged in an act of war.

27:19 But so, what's happened is that Trump is now trying to force that Strait open.

27:26 You know, he's begging South Korea to come help.

27:28 He's telling China they need to come help.

27:30 But the Iranians have control over the Strait,

27:34 and they have control of the Strait because all they

27:36 really have to do is convince insurers that they don't

27:41 want to insure the ships coming and going through

27:43 the Strait and because they might get hit with a drone,

27:47 and then no insurer is going to touch it.

27:49 So, that's that's actually the mechanism by which they're closing the Strait.

27:53 They're not actually sitting there with guns.

27:55 They're saying, "Don't try it cuz you have

27:57 this giant metal thing full of extraordinarily explosive material,

28:02 and we have a very hot drone over here that we could just drop on it." So,

28:07 over the weekend, beginning yesterday morning, it was announced on Sunday,

28:11 and it was it was it began yesterday morning,

28:14 uh the Trump administration uh um announced Project Freedom.

28:19 And what they are uh what they say they are doing is

28:23 they are going to escort commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

28:28 And they're they're billing this as being humanitarian because there's a lot

28:32 of um uh seamen who are trapped because of the closure of the Strait.

28:38 And it is a humanitarian crisis.

28:39 These people were supposed to be in and out.

28:41 Their food's running low.

28:42 The sanitation on the ships is bad.

28:44 I mean, it's a real problem, and you know,

28:46 I you know, I I talk a lot about maritime issues,

28:49 and it uh I feel like our maritime around the world,

28:53 but certainly our US maritime, I feel is so often overlooked.

28:58 Um I've obviously have friends in the in the maritime industries,

29:01 and um and it's a crisis for them.

29:03 That's that's absolutely true.

29:05 But he's doing it insisting that his this is a humanitarian effort because

29:09 what he's trying to do is he's trying to to open up that Strait.

29:13 And Iran has said, "Ain't happening, dude.

29:16 You know, you you're you're not just going to um going to do this.

29:20 We have said that Strait is closed.

29:21 We've said we'd cooperate,

29:22 but not while you're engaged in an act of war against us." So,

29:26 yesterday, they um sent drones and missiles toward uh two US [sighs]

29:36 destroyers, I think, and two commercial ships.

29:40 Um Didn't hit either one of them.

29:42 They were intercepted,

29:43 but they did apparently hit uh part of an important oil region

29:49 in the United Arab Emirates or the UAE sort of as a demonstration that you

29:54 know we could really wreak havoc here if you're not going to play

29:58 with us because you know Trump has really two options at this point.

30:02 He can continue bombing which he keeps

30:05 alternately threatening to do or he can basically

30:09 announce he's won and walk away with Iran

30:12 having control of the Strait of Hormuz.

30:14 So essentially Iran appeared to be demonstrating if

30:18 you think you want this war to start up again a reminder that we can hit the oil

30:23 fields and so please don't go that direction.

30:27 Meanwhile mind you there are negotiations apparently going

30:31 on but who knows what's what's going on with this administration.

30:34 We're all reading other countries newspapers to figure things out.

30:38 Anyway so so today the Secretary of State Marco Rubio who appeared

30:49 to be running you know trying out whether or not he's going to run

30:51 for president in 28 told reporters that the firing back and forth now

30:57 here happening even though there's a ceasefire

31:00 which apparently doesn't actually mean a ceasefire.

31:04 um that that is not a sign that the ceasefire

31:08 is over because if it were then they got to deal

31:13 with the fact they're 4 days overdue from getting congressional

31:17 approval for this war which is just been a global disaster.

31:22 So what Rubio said is that the war is over

31:26 the the the first part of the war is over

31:29 operation epic fury is over and now we're in a new

31:33 phase and that new phase is the project freedom phase.

31:38 So we don't really have to worry any longer about that first

31:41 60 day thing because we have something new going on over here now.

31:45 Which is to me such profound rejection

31:57 of the key principles of American democracy.

32:01 You can hear how angry I am.

32:03 Because one of the things that the the founders but also the framers

32:08 of the Constitution were absolutely all over

32:14 was the right of the American people

32:17 to have a say in whether or not we went to war

32:21 and that in many ways was the symbol of it all because if a leader could

32:27 take you to war as kings did across Europe in in the memories

32:35 of the framers themselves without your consultation

32:41 that meant that the king had the right

32:45 to impose extraordinary taxes on you for his own ends without you having

32:49 any say in it which is of course what the revolution was fought over.

32:54 But also that the king could spend your lives

32:56 however he wanted without you having any say in it

32:59 rather like Vladimir Putin is doing to Russians right

33:01 now who are essentially being fed into a meat grinder.

33:05 So to have this administration pretending that we are not at war

33:11 and pretending that they do not need to consult the Congress of the United

33:16 States for that war seems to me to go all the way

33:22 back to that billion dollars they want to put into the ballroom.

33:28 That is this whole idea started by the Republicans

33:32 in the modern era it actually comes from an earlier period

33:36 that you would make America great by cutting taxes and cutting

33:40 regulations because that was going to be great for everybody.

33:43 That somehow taxes were the real villain here and that if you

33:46 just cut taxes you'd you'd have a better economy and more freedom.

33:51 What that did was it led to a country

33:55 where people don't have health care people don't have food

33:58 security we have our roads are crumbling we have all

34:02 these ways in which our actual country is falling apart.

34:07 And the extraordinarily wealthy people are no longer paying

34:11 taxes they're the ones who got the tax cuts.

34:14 And what they are getting is government

34:16 contracts from this administration they're getting lax regulations

34:21 for the fields that in the industries

34:23 that they care about that they're making billions from.

34:26 We have a president who has just poured

34:29 money into his own pockets and now we have

34:33 this bait and switch on the ballroom which is

34:36 such a slap in the face to the American people.

34:40 Oh you know we're we're doing this to modernize

34:43 the ballroom you know modernize the East Wing.

34:45 Trump needed to take it down without

34:47 any permissions without consulting Congress and now he's

34:51 going to build this beautiful ballroom and it's

34:53 going to be privately funded and now

34:55 here we are October November December January

34:58 February March April May 7 months later

35:01 and they want a billion dollars from us to put security in that stupid ballroom.

35:10 And so for me the story of today is

35:17 bait and switch but also the extraordinary uh the hollowness

35:26 of that ideology that says if we cut more taxes

35:31 and we cut more regulations everybody's going to do better.

35:35 And and at the same time they're turning right around and saying oh but while

35:41 we're at it can you guys just pour money into our pockets and that to me

35:47 with the corruption and everything else in this administration

35:50 to me I just I was in the car for a very long time could not get

35:54 off that budget reconciliation bill that the Republicans

35:59 can in fact hammer through without a single

36:02 Democratic vote and we will have to live with that for at least 3 years

36:08 with the the funding for ICE and border border patrol

36:13 and all that that means for our loss

36:15 of liberty for their use of surveillance technologies

36:18 for all the ways in which they are

36:19 consolidating power among a very small group of people.

36:24 But we're also going to have to look at that damn ballroom.