Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch. Grab a stool next to Greg Karambas of Radio America and Jim Garrity of National Review. Three martinis coming up. So glad to have you with us for the Wednesday edition of the Three Martini Lunch. Jim Garrity is away today and in his place. We're happy to have Inez Stettman of the Independent Women's Forum. Inez, let's begin.
with the first one, and it got a lot of attention yesterday. And Elon Musk, officially no longer head of the Department of Government Efficiency, although we keep hearing that he's going to have an ongoing role of some sort, but he is not happy.
with the Republicans' efforts to restrain and cut spending. NBC version of the story, Elon Musk issued a blistering criticism of the massive Republican bill for President Donald Trump's agenda Tuesday posting on X that it is, quote, a disgusting abomination, unquote. He says, I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong. You know it.
Unquote. So and as you know, there's the ongoing debate with narrow margins, especially in the House. You got to get the best one you can and still get everybody on board, which is what Mike Johnson's argument basically is. Others are saying, no, you've got Republican control of the House, the Senate, the White House.
You got to get as aggressive as humanly possible here. And people are calling on the Senate to do that, which is never a very likely thing to happen in the U.S. Senate. My personal favorite part about this, Inez, is that the media has no idea what to do because they hate Trump and Musk both so much.
that they don't know how to gauge this uh this divide that's emerging here but what do you make of of musk's argument and what do you make of the fact that he's going public here yeah i mean i i think i'll get to the substance on the bill in a moment but First of all, this should put to rest something that was quite popular to say, I don't know, two months ago and somehow totally petered out with good reason, but with no account to the people who...
you know, argued this, which I don't think it was a crazy argument at the time. But there was you saw a lot of questions. Okay, you know, who's who's alpha? Like, who's the top dog between Trump and Musk? Is Musk really the basically the shadow president? You know, there was a lot of mainstream media.
reports like that. And now we see very clearly who is in charge politically, and it's Donald Trump. And that doesn't mean that, you know, Elon Musk wasn't an important advisor to the president when he was at Doge. It doesn't mean that the president isn't still taking his
calls and his advice people disagree all the time but that that whole kind of narrative that was attempted to be spun where the president was small and musk was like this billionaire who actually was running the world and the u.s government at the same time that should be put to rest right now, but we have a very public disagreement where the president is in one place and Elon Musk is another, and guess who is winning politically, right? So on the substance...
Look, I think this goes back to, I think, the way that Musk would define the failures of Doge. But I actually think it was very successful, just not on the things that he cared about. Right. So if the goal of Doge or the goal of this bill. was to cut substantially.
from the federal government and to substantially reduce the deficit and right our fiscal house, all the things in which I'm in favor of, by the way, then both are failures. This is not the first time a Republican bill has been, you know, a big spending bill. This is not a new phenomenon.
on. There are some attempts to cut and control the deficit in this bill, but I'm very sympathetic to the arguments that they aren't sufficient to the task, right? Part of the reason is because, of course, without
substantially touching entitlements, which is very unpopular in the United States and Donald Trump has never been in favor of, it's hard to really change our fiscal trajectory, right? All of those critiques are true on the substance, but I think they kind of miss the point, both on Doge and on this bill. On policy, there are a bunch of really good policies in this bill, forgetting for a moment about how much they end up costing, right? It is a good policy.
to give more money to the border, to start building a border wall to enforce our laws at the border. Those are good policy. goals. Similarly, right? There's some smaller things in here, like an endowment tax, my favorite, as I've mentioned on here a bunch of times, right? There's a 21% endowment tax on universities that have more than a billion dollars in endowments in this bill. Like there are really, really good substantive.
policy wins in this bill that make me much more in favor of it than previous iterations of Republican bills that I was very critical of, even at the expense of the deficit. And I think Doge is mostly the same way. If you think about Doge as like cutting massive
trillion dollars from the budget, then of course it was a failure. But if you think of Doge as highlighting a bunch of programs that were essentially propping up the institutional left with taxpayer money, then I think it's a great success.
It's highlighted those programs to the nation. It's cut a lot of those programs, especially when they're not enumerated by congressional, you know, there's no funds earmarked specifically for those programs. It was just a slush fund for the left. So I think it's actually very successful to get rid of that stuff. if ultimately we still are left with the same big long-term deficit problem.
Yeah, it's still $2 trillion a year. And a lot of people are saying it'll get a little bit worse. But obviously, you have to extend the tax cuts. And there's other provisions in there, work requirements for Medicaid, which I think is a step in the right direction.
Question is, can you dig into spending? And like you said, neither party wants to touch entitlements. We've been talking about this for 30 years, probably longer than that. I can at least remember for the last 30 years. And nobody wants to touch.
what's long been called the third rail, whether it's Social Security or Medicare or or any of this. And that's why the Democrats are lighting their hair on fire about even the slightest tweaks to Medicaid, the able bodied adults who should at least be trying to find work, if not actually working in. order to stay eligible for those benefits and so ultimately you know we got this other bill that they're trying to start up now with the doge rescissions making those codified actually passing those
You know, with these narrow margins, I don't know if it's going to happen, but at least it's a drop in the bucket. So what's your take on, you know, whether we are going to get spending cuts, if not in this bill, because it's limited under reconciliation, but either in the rescissions bill or the appropriate.
appropriations here later in the year. The Republicans always say next time. So I'm definitely leery. But do you think it's actually going to be seriously tried and possibly even accomplished? Well, nobody ever went broke betting against Republicans spending money. So I mean, I'm not particularly optimistic that there are going to be serious cuts, in part for all the reasons you just.
outlined, right? There is a fundamental problem. The US public doesn't support cuts to entitlements or revisions to entitlements that would make them fiscally sustainable. Now, maybe they won't support that, the public won't support that until we hit a fiscal... wall, right? Because fundamentally, the way that these entitlements are put together
given the current demographics and the way, like the economic structure of today and the fact that people live much longer and they have many fewer children, like the math does not work for these entitlements. They have to be restructured at some point. I'm kind of given up. in a certain sense on this, even though I haven't changed my views about it. Not because it's not a problem, but because the U.S. faces so many critical other problems, like the out-of-control border and immigration crisis.
is like a five alarm fire problem for the United States. The way that the administrative state has been functioning for the last 30 years is a five alarm fire to me. The way that our higher education and increasingly K-12 are essentially anti-American.
indoctrination centers funded by the taxpayer, that's a five alarm fire to me. All these things are driving us over the cliff, I think, faster than our very real fiscal problems. So to me, it's a matter of political priorities, and I just don't see the political will. to tackle entitlements, even though I think, I think it's, if anybody honestly goes into the math on these things,
I think comes out to basically the same conclusion. Now, how they want to solve it, whether it's by raising taxes or cutting, you know, that might be dependent on their political perspective. But the math is, is, is mapping as the, as the kids say, the math ain't mapping in this. So it's going to have to happen at some point. I don't think we should leave these very, very substantial policy wins on the table in an attempt to fix a problem that...
you know, frankly, the American public doesn't yet support fixing exit question. And as you live in a deep blue city in a deep blue state, I'm sure in some ways the salt extensions. would benefit a lot of people there, but other people say it benefits, you know, horrible state and local policy and bails that out. So any thoughts on that? I think you're right. And look, I.
I'd like to get a bigger tax cut, of course. But yeah, no, functionally what it is, is the rest of the country subsidizing a very, very high tax state.
and the policies that blue states have chosen to pursue. And that's not right. That being said, again, like this is all like horse trading. I generally have moved away from putting these kinds of economic questions front and center in my politics, simply because I think the state of the country, which is now easy to forget, I guess we have short memories just a few months later, but the state of the country of the cultural revolution in this country was so.
distressing and so ominous to me in terms of the future. Look, I mean, I'll be very frank. I was preparing for a scenario in which I raised my daughter in this country essentially as a dissident. that she would not be able to take advantage of everything America has to offer because her parents have been outspoken on various issues. I think that was like a very...
possible future for the United States, and now I don't. And so to me, these fiscal questions, although they are important and need to be solved, come second to making sure that we fully dismantle the institutional left's ability. to put us back on the trajectory that we were on, you know, whatever it was five months ago. Yeah, a lot to watch here. See what the Senate comes up with. We'll see if they can hammer out a compromise between the House and Senate, but quite a ways to go.
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slash martini that's netsuite.com slash martini All right, and as on to our bad martini now, and we've had irresponsible politicians say irresponsible things plenty of times, you know, Chuck Schumer telling Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, you know.
Don't rule against us on abortion or you're going to reap the whirlwind and that kind of stuff. And there's been plenty of people saying outlandish things for a long time. The latest is Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, the minority leader. He's very upset. that people who are in the country illegally, whether they came illegally, whether they overstayed their visas, what have you, he doesn't like the fact that Trump is actually making good on his effort to
remove these people. And so he's also not happy at all with ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the people who are covering their faces so they don't become targets for left-wing nut jobs. by doing their jobs. And here's what Hakeem Jeffries has in mind in terms of those people. Every single ICE agent who's engaged in this aggressive overreach.
and are trying to hide their identities from the American people, will be unsuccessful in doing that. This is America. This is not the Soviet Union. We're not behind the Iron Curtain. This is not the 1930s. And every single one of them, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes, will of course be identified. That sounds way more scary than what the Trump administration is doing. And as your family has.
ties behind the Iron Curtain. I'm guessing you don't quite see the same parallel that Hakeem Jeffries does here. No, of course not. And these are the sort of tactics that we have come to expect from the left. But let's be clear, it's not just the leftist crazies that are the reason that these
enforcement officers are often hiding their faces. It's also that you're going after deporting cartel members, for example. Right. So this is the same problem with police officers when they do work against the mob, for example. You know, it's part of the risk that you take when you. run for DA, right? But these are just rank and file, right? They haven't taken on the risk of
you know, being a assassination target for Mexican drug cartels. Right. So this is obviously a safety measure, both against the left and against cartels and against organized crime groups that are not happy to see their members. So, yeah, I know I obviously I think the comparison is crazy. These are people who are enforcing eminently fair.
US immigration laws. And this is what Americans voted for. You know, this is democracy, as the left likes to say. So this is something that the American people have called for for a long time. And by the way, it says something about our politics, something broken about our
politics until this moment that it took this long to happen because this is exactly the kind of sustained majority very clear expression of the voters will that the founders were not trying to stymie right we're talking about 30 40 years
of sustained large majorities who say, please get this immigration problem under control. Please get people who are illegally here and committing crimes in this country deported to their home countries. This is really affecting my quality of life. I see these people.
you know, all over the United States and big cities, small towns everywhere. This problem is affecting Americans. And they've been saying to their politicians, please do something about this. There are laws on the books to do something about it. Please do something about it. And for 30 to 40 years.
political system did not respond to that sustained will of the people. So sorry, this is democracy, not the Soviet Union. This is exactly what should be happening. It's always fascinating, Inez, when it's a... whistleblower in a Republican administration. Think of the Vindman brothers or somebody else who has spoken out about these supposedly heinous actions of Republican administration. If you attack them.
or you're attacking even people in a Democratic administration, these are noble public servants. How dare you try to besmirch their integrity and reputation? But people are simply enforcing laws during a Republican administration are suddenly jackbooted thugs from a communist regime. It's quite the contrast.
Yeah, well, I mean, what would we expect? But it is interesting that the sort of the straight left, the large protests have been ineffective or not as crazy as they have been, let's say, in 2020 or even in 2022. It seems like this.
street organized left is kind of quiet but what you do have are these singular crazies you know whether they're overstays visa overstays in boulder or whether they are like domestically homegrown like crazy left-wing violent people who are executing violent acts on behalf of that ideology but it does seem to be more isolated both more radical and more isolated in the same time right like i don't know what your impression is of this greg but i expected more organized street
protest. It really does seem either that they're demoralized in some way or that the Democratic Party has much more control over those street protests that the, you know, political consultants and backrooms actually do have much more control over those mass street protests than they claim to have, because obviously, I don't think that would help the Democratic Party, right?
now. So yeah, it's kind of interesting how they've faded out and have been replaced by these single violent actors. There's nothing organic about these immediate, immense left-wing protests that... show up, whether it's gun control or the Women's March and these other things. But it's fascinating to watch. They tried these anti-Musk rallies in different cities around the country, but I don't think they really accomplished what they were.
hoping to their turnout wasn't fantastic. And so, yeah, there's been nothing. Obviously, there have been violent acts against Tesla's and like that. There were some attempts to make these protests. I know AOC and Bernie went around on their oligarchy. anti-Polikarchy tour, right? And they do seem to have managed to damage Musk's companies. But compared to what we saw a few years ago, I don't know if your impression is the same. It just seems...
somewhat muted. Oh, no, compared to the beginning of the first Trump administration, I mean, they were in the streets en masse after just about everything. And now, you know, you could say they're inspired, perhaps, but they seem to be individual actors in a lot of cases, whether it's firebombing the Teslas or, you know, the anti-Semitic murders here in Washington or what we saw in Boulder. It doesn't seem to be organized at any level.
level, although the rhetoric is coming from some pretty high position figures, including Hakeem Jeffries in a situation like this. So anyway, yeah, the left is still in disarray. They still don't know what to think coming out of the 2024 elections, which is rare for them. They usually have. at least an organization ready to go and to push back. They are definitely in disarray. They still don't even have their leadership set up. They're still trying to...
shoved David Hogg out of power and all this stuff at the DNC. Do you feel the like lessening of the ratchet? Because I do like that ever leftward ratchet that's been going my entire political life and probably long before then that like just feeling of every two years we're ratcheting.
who we elect no matter there this is the first time i feel like that ratchet is loosening up off my neck i don't know about you it's definitely on some issues immigration in particular i mean we see the border numbers that have drastically improved over the first few months of this trump administration And we see him pushing forward with ICE and a lot of these executive orders, one of which we'll talk about in just a moment, where he's actively pushing back. And some Democrats understand.
that abandoning these really unpopular positions is probably best for the party long term. But the rank and file don't see that. They don't see that at all. They still think violence is the way to go. They're still going to go all the way to the wall with trans sports, which we'll talk about in a second, with defending illegals, even criminal illegals. I mean, they stood up for weeks and still are for the traffic.
gang member who happens to be in custody down in El Salvador. And so they still can't quite quit it because they have to keep their base happy. But deep down, I think they realized they made a lot of mistakes by getting way too far left on these issues. So they're trying to dial it back, but their base won't let them. So it's kind of fun to watch.
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All right, on to the crazy martini now, Inez. And we teased it a little bit at the end of the last martini. But just in the past few weeks, we have seen kind of a flurry. of stories about boys still being allowed to compete in girls sports and then shock of all shocks
dominating some of those competitions where at the very end of the school year, you're seeing state championship meets, particularly in track and field, but you're seeing it in softball. We had a boy on a girls team in Minnesota that was a pitcher and basically shut down the dominant.
defending state champs. And so that was obviously a big deal. Just last weekend, California, Oregon, Washington, a lot of track and field events where the boys who are allowed to compete as girls obviously did well. because of the physical advantages that they have. The girls who refused to get on the podium in Oregon got a lot of headlines for refusing to stand next to the boy who was allowed to compete against them and robbed them of their opportunity for a state championship and so forth.
administration says they're looking into this. They had an executive order from I think it was early February saying the states need to stop doing this. Trump had the dust up with the governor of Maine. Gavin Newsom's been all over the place on this, saying to Charlie Kirk that he didn't think that it was fair for boys to compete with girls, but he's obviously not doing anything about it. So the blue states are resisting clenched fist. Inez, what's going to be the fallout here?
Yeah, well, first of all, the Trump administration came out with a strong response to this. There will be federal responses to this. Look, actually, there's a very good argument just like on race discrimination that our civil rights laws, including Title IX, prevent federal.
real money from going to places that discriminate against girls. And what could be more discrimination that actually affects girls' ability to enjoy the opportunities placed before them by their educations, including sports? That's what Title IX is. about than by allowing them to compete against men who then take their scholarships, their medals, and their, like, you know, the self-respect of being able to declare I'm the best, right? This is not...
a small issue. I know that the left's response has been, oh, well, there's what I think somebody said there's nine of these athletes in the whole country. No, they're not. We see it every single weekend. We see it every single week in blue states.
I would say this highlights how important it is. I was talking about that ratchet coming off. And look, I think it's very important that there's been a quote unquote vibe shift, right? And I think that is very real and has consequences, but it has to be codified in law. It is absolutely necessary, both on the federal and the state level, to define sex in law. My organization, IW, does a lot of work on this in the states. We need to codify what our civil rights laws mean with regard to sex.
Congress to do that. Otherwise, the next Democratic administration can once again redefine sex. There's a bill in Congress to do that, to define sex in Title IX. These are really, really necessary steps to codify this victory. a victory. I think now there is a dam breaking people, you know, the 80% of people who are willing to see what's in front of their face all agree that this is wrong. You know, you have Democrats assembling about how it's not important, but very few people.
other than a very, very ideologically dedicated minority are willing to actually defend it. So I do think there's been a cultural victory, but it really needs to be codified into a policy and legal victory or it will not stand. I think that's a good point. And we should point out that that legislation has passed the House.
with zero Democratic votes and it got blocked with a filibuster in the Senate because zero Democrats voted for it. And so the Democrats are still in lockstep on this. They think this is where they have to be. for their base but you're right about the issue it's one of those we always say 80 20 i don't know exactly what the numbers are but a lot of different people particularly those who saw the shift in
black men voting for Donald Trump this year. It was that ad with Kamala Harris on camera talking about how she strongly supports taxpayer funded gender reassignment surgeries for. prisoners and illegals and this sort of thing and so people saw that and like how extreme can you be i don't know how many votes she lost because of that but uh there's a lot of people who think that was a pretty significant part of the campaign yeah i want to just double down on something that you
Right. You pointed out that all Democrats in the House voted against basically excluding men from women's sports and that once again, Democrats are holding holding that bill hostage in the Senate because Democrats will not vote to. One, Republicans need to keep banging them over the head with this as long as they allow it as an issue.
to use against them but the second thing is like once again the difference between vibes and policy right a lot of those people who voted against this bill are out there softening their language on this issue right they're down like i said they're downplaying it Like, this isn't one of the most important issues. Yes, we agree. Girls should be able to fully compete and fairly compete, comma, let's move on, right?
And yet they are still voting against the legislation today, not, you know, two years ago today that would codify that because it is rhetorical. It's a rhetorical retreat in face of overwhelming cultural consensus at this point against them.
But they have not retreated one iota from the actual policy and legislation. And you can bet that if Democrats gain power again, they will not need to pass anything to Congress. Their way of doing this is just by reinterpreting and ludicrously reinterpreting.
a bunch of words to mean what they don't mean in the law. So this really needs to be codified. Very well said. And if I can call out one Democrat in particular, it's Seth Moulton from Massachusetts, who has consistently voted against this legislation. Yet after the Democrats...
got beat for the House, Senate, and White House last year. He was kind of doing that post-mortem election thing saying, well, you know what? I'm not comfortable with my daughter playing against boys either. Our party has gotten way too radical on this issue. But when he has the chance to vote on this issue again in 2025, he's still a no. Nothing's changed, just the words.
Inez, always great to have you with us. We'll actually have you once again next week. So we look forward to that. Appreciate your time. Thanks. It's always great to be here. Inez Stuttman of the Independent Women's Forum. And for Jim Garrity today, Jim will be back on Thursday. Please subscribe to the Three Martini Lunch podcast if you don't always.
already, please tell a friend to do so as well. We'd love to have them listening. Thanks also for your five star ratings and your kind reviews. Please keep those coming. Get us on your home devices. All you have to say is play three martini lunch podcast. Follow all three of us on X and as is at. Inez Felcher. Jim is at Jim Garrity. I'm at Greg Karambas. Have a terrific Wednesday and join us again on Thursday for the next Three Martini Lunch.