Bye. Bye. Bye. Morning Glory, everybody. Dwayne Patterson in for Hugh Hewitt as Hugh starts his two-week-long Hillsdale cruise vacation. Great to have you here, as is always the case whenever Hugh takes time off. And I am fortunate enough to get to sit in the big chair and bring you the news and bring you all the video cuts. It is just a cornucopia of good news and good material to bring to your attention. So buckle up.
a lot straight ahead. Of course, our Friday regulars, Matt Contineni will be along. Ben Dominich will be along. Maybe Jim Garrity, if he remembers. We will have poetry from Tarzana Joe, like we normally do on Friday. And he will be back with Dr. Larry Arnn. It's actually kind of a current news edition of the Hillsdale Dialogue right before they went off to Europe together on this cruise.
with a bunch of Hillstale people. It's going to be a great time over there, and it's a great time here to be an American and see... What's going on? There's lots of economic news, and it's virtually all good news. the inflation report came out for April, and we're at 0.1 inflation for the month.
annualized, it's down to like 2.1. Even if you do that core inflation number, it's still 0.1 for the month and it's 2.5 for the year. So inflation is finally... planing out back to the 2% target goal that the Fed wants, that a lot of Americans want, and kind of where Trump had it in his first term. Personal household incomes for the fourth straight month is...
has shot straight up. In fact, Rick Santelli, if you've got good economic news out there on the horizon, you want Rick Santelli to bring it to you from CNBC. Harley, let's play Cut 20 real quick. Income is up eight-tenths, up eight-tenths of a percent. That is almost triple the expectations, and it underscores. We could talk about a lot of issues, but when you look at income for the first four months of the year,
They're powerful numbers, Joe. Up six-tenths in January, up seven-tenths in February, up a half and one percent last month, up eight-tenths this month. This is a great four-month start to any year. Now, with the income shooting up, and by the way, 8.10 is the strongest income month over month jump since May of 21 when it was 1.9. So household incomes are... sharply starting to go up. Inflation is moderating it off. So the household income is coming up. It's not just keeping up. It's actually...
increasing over inflation. So we don't have that doom cycle like we had during the Biden four years. So. Layered upon that, you see the numbers about the trade deficit. Now, remember, that's what started all this tariff stuff, right? Because we had a record trade deficit, over $2 trillion annually. And it's...
Trump said it's not sustainable. We've got to pare that back. We've got to start making things here again. We've got to start redoing all these trade deals. That's where Liberation Day came from, was because of the problem of the trade deficit. And I'm not saying it's got to be at zero. I don't even know if the Trump administration thinks it has to be at zero, but it's way too high. And a funny thing happened after Liberation Day, after the tariffs have been in effect.
The trade deficit seems to be falling. Once again, Rick Santelli with the call. Cut 21. The last number is, of course, a very important number to this administration. This is the trade balance, which is a deficit, expecting minus $143 billion. Wow, it comes in much, much smaller, minus $8 billion. 187 billion. And now this follows, this follows a 163 that gets converted to 162 billion with a minus sign. The worst since record keeping 1989. Then we cut it in half to 87.6.
87.6 would be the lightest. And I have to really go back. 87.6 would be the lightest since. Wow. September of 23, SEP of 23. And this really does underscore how the movement of goods and services has really changed due to a variety of tariff-related issues.
So the trade deficit is coming down. Now, you can write a lot of that off and say that everybody knew these tariffs were coming. Everybody knew that Donald Trump was going to crack down and things were going to get more expensive to import. So a lot of importers, a lot of companies. that bring in products from overseas brought in stuff on the front end of the year in a hurry. So that's why the trade deficit was so maybe artificially high.
And now that they've imported a lot of their material to cover inventories for the next few months, now that's kind of softened off. And that's why the numbers come back down. Part of that is certainly true. But that was baked into the expectations that Wall Street had. And the trade deficit still came in under what the expectations were. It beat the expectations game. So lots of great news.
Remember the Democratic media and political apparatus in the East Coast, right? The Beltway bubble. Media and politicians alike. The same people that lied to you about Russiagate, the same people that lied to you about Hunter's laptop. The same people that lied to you about Joe Biden being competent in 2020. The same people that lied to you about him being competent in 2024. The same people that told you Kamala Harris was totally ready for this.
In mid-24 when Biden wasn't. The same people that made predictions about. What was that word, an R word, that we were going to have because of tariffs? These same people that lied to you about all this other stuff, they also made a prediction about a recession. Cut number one.
What's your hunch? Is the U.S. going to go into a recession or not? Look, I'm going to defer to economists who give it about a 50 percent chance. I think all these things are probably inflationary a little bit more and slowing down the economy. If there's a recession, I don't know how.
big it'll be or how long it'll last. Hopefully we'll avoid it, but I wouldn't take it off the table at this point. Do you believe we're in a recession now? So my guess is we're heading towards a recession. So he is completely indifferent to a recession to the pain that it will be caused. But on the recession front, it is surprising, Brad, that suddenly Trump is putting a recession on the table and trying to tell Americans.
that it'll be just fine if that happens this year? And now it's leading to potential layoffs, as well as a pause in hiring and investments. So we're headed toward a recession because of Trump's policies. This tariff regime remains. There will be a recession. This man is rooting for a recession. And I was saying, it's the only way Trump's going to be unpopular. And they were like, and of course, I'm just rooting. I can't make it actually happen. They didn't seem to understand.
But I'm rooting for one again. Donald Trump is clearly crashing the economy in real time, and he's driving us toward a recession. And they have said that the chances of a recession are growing. Do you agree? I do. I do. I think every economist I've spoken to. basically who isn't paid to believe otherwise, believes that. Recession probabilities have gone way up. I wouldn't want to go so far as to forecast a recession. But look, estimates suggest that the impact of this.
These whole tariffs, if they stay where they are on consumers, could be in the region of $4,000. I want to start with the R word. I know you think this is just a piece of it. Of course, I'm talking about a recession. I think it is likely that the United States will dip into a recession because of President Trump's tariffs. I think that right now we are at a decision making point and very close to a recession.
To your point, he's willing to, eyes wide open, I mean, drive the economy in recession. Mr. President, make no mistake about it. Donald Trump is teeing up. A nationwide recession. Because we're on the road to both inflation and recession. This is not Liberation Day. It's Recession Day. the United States of America.
But bluntly, the markets don't like it, consumers don't like it, and we're already seeing predictions that there will be shrinking growth and a recession this year. And experts now say the risk of a recession is 40%. See, here's the thing. Here's the problem with all that. The Fed in Atlanta has now forecast a 3.8% GDP growth for quarter two. When all is said and done, they're forecasting almost 4% GDP after the tariffs that we're supposed to bring on the recession. Don't listen to media.
They lied to you. They don't know what they're talking about. Dwayne Patterson for Hugh. More right after this. Welcome back, everybody. 21 minutes past the hour. Dwayne Patterson in for Hugh Hewitt today. Joined by a good friend of mine, Jim Garrity. Gary the Indispensable of National Review, also a columnist for The Washington Post. He's the senior political correspondent over at NR and joins me now because apparently he woke up. Hello, Jim. How are you?
Dwayne, do your listeners know that when I appear on this program, I have no idea what we're going to talk about. And as a result of that, I need to be on top of every item in the news. Just in case you or Professor Hewitt says, I hope you did the reading on... It's not the Leaning Tower. It's the... Looming. Looming. Looming Tower. The Looming Tower. The Looming Tower. All right, so let's go over our term papers on why Alger Hiss was a spy. Yes, yes, yes, that's exactly right. That one.
So we have affectionately called Garrity the indispensable for 25 years that he's been on this show roughly. But Garrity, to be fair and actual factual about this, you aren't. the only indispensable person for all of republicanism. We have Joe Biden for that, too, because what would we do without Joe Biden on the stage? Like he was at the Korean Memorial today. Here's a little gaggle afterwards. Let's play cut number 17.
And there's also been a lot of discussion recently about your mental and physical capabilities while you were in office. You can see that. I'm mentally incompetent and I can't walk and I can beat the hell out of both of them. Do you want to reply to any of those?
reports and also to the fact that there are some Democrats who are now questioning whether you should have run for re-election in the first place. Why didn't they run against me then? Because I would have beaten them. Do you have any regrets? Jim Garrity, you can see I'm incompetent, right? You can see I can't walk, right? Who put him out there today?
Did Anthony Bernal put him out there? My guess is the family. They probably don't like the coverage over the last couple weeks and have decided, let's go out and show them. Let's roll him out there and show what old Joe can do. By the way, nothing would make me happier. And I have got some disagreements with Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. I think Thompson was among the better ones in the mainstream media on covering Biden and his age and the way it was affecting the...
presidency but uh i would love for them because i'd say all right mr president let's get it on all right you want to beat us you you threw down the gauntlet let's show let's settle this like men we'll do tag team Alex and Jake, we'll do one-on-one. We won't team up. You know what? You want to bring your vice president?
You want to bring, you know, Ron Klain to be, we can do double team. We can do tag team. We can do two on two. We can do it the way you want. But we will demonstrate that we can kick your butt, you 82-year-old man. Don't break a hip when you do it. So I'd love to see like if I because that's been that was Biden's like reflexive. He was getting questions even back, you know, not nearly as often as he should have. But like 2019, 2020, he would say, you know.
Mr. Vice President, how do you feel like your age will affect the job? He goes, watch me! And then he would only do events between 10 and 4. You couldn't watch him. He wasn't doing that. He wasn't on camera all that often. And it's Brazil. So then the question, you're lying, dog face, pony soldier. Look, fat. I'll show you. And he's always just like, ah, I'm tougher than you are.
Which is really a dodge, because we all know Joe Biden is not going to go out and kick anybody. He's like every caricature that Dana Carvey comes up with, right? Yes. And so, by the way, it is intriguing that they decided to roll him out. It's not like he needed to attend the event today. And I think they thought it would do them some good. And I think that says something about...
This is not the first time they've had a bad news cycle and they rolled the old man out thinking that he could do it one more time. And he's failed every time they do that. He's only made matters worse. Isn't that the classical definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result? Let me play you one more clip of Joe Biden actually from the speech. And this is just this is the greatest.
encapsulation of all that was wrong with Joe Biden. Cut number 16. All the years I've been doing this, I never thought we'd get to this point. But we are. Our troops don't wear a uniform that says I'm a Democrat or I'm a Republican. Says I'm an American. I'm an American. That's who I am. I'm serious about this. I'm not joking. And folks, our politics has become, as I said, so divided.
They wear the uniform of the United States of America. The only nation in the world, literally, not free, the only nation in the world founded on an idea, an idea. Every nation was founded on geography, ethnicity, some unifying principle, but not an idea. The idea of America was founded on, we hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men and women are created equal.
Endowed by the creator of certain inalienable rights. Life, liberty, pursuit of that. We meant it. That's who we are. That's what makes America the most unique nation in the world. Literally, not figuratively. In fact, folks. You know, for generation after generation, the profound idea has been defended by ordinary citizens who stepped up and answered the call. Because of them.
American democracy has endured for nearly 250 years. Every generation, every generation, every generation has to fight to maintain that democracy. Jim Garrity, that's got everything you need in it, doesn't it? Yeah. So Dwayne, the first question I want to ask, can you be most unique? Does unique have degrees of uniqueness? You're either unique or you aren't. Is it unique, unique-er, and unique-est? Yeah, I think if there's other stuff like you, then you're not unique.
So it's binary. You're either unique or you're not unique. That's classic 82-year-old Joe Biden riffing on what most people would say is a fairly self-evident fine point of... you know, people in the armed services aren't Republicans or Democrats, they're Americans. Okay, fine. He goes on a great length about that. It's an upgrade version of Obama's. There are no red states or blue states, only red, white, and blue states. Quick closing question. Do you want...
Do you want to see do you want to see Jill Biden have to answer up? Do you want to do you want to see this auto pen scandal flourish or do you want to just have it go away? I looked it up. The presidents have testified to Congress before. I think the last one was Gerald Ford. It hasn't happened in a while, but I think it's serious enough. The thing is, is we all kind of know he's going to say, oh, no, I was of sound mind every single minute of it. And I think, you know.
The questioning of Joe Biden under oath by Congress could probably lead to some, probably a rerun of the Robert Hurr testimony. Yeah, I think so. I think so. Garrity, thanks very much. We'll be back right after the break with Matt Continetti. Stick around. Dwayne Patterson in for Hugh. We'll be back right after this. Thirty four minutes past the hour. Welcome back, everybody. Dwayne Patterson in for Hugh Hewitt as he is.
Just beginning his two-week-long Hillsdale cruise vacation. And lots of guest hosts coming up over the next couple of weeks. I will kind of bookend the weeks. Mark Davis is along. Ed Morrissey is along of Hot Air. Kurt Schlichter will come in here and break the furniture for a couple of days. Hope you join us for that.
I am joined by one of our favorite Friday regulars and one of our favorite guests, period, Matt Contineni of the American Enterprise Institute. Joining us from the American Enterprise Institute's remote Stassi bunker. Looks like on the video. Hi, Matt. Welcome back. How are you? Hi, Dwayne. Great to talk to you. Yes, I'm coming from my undisclosed location inside. The D.C. establishment inside the AEI. So I.
I want to, since we're talking about the D.C. establishment, I wasn't going to necessarily go here, but I'm going to go here because it's just too fun not to. So you saw the Joe Biden speech or the clips from the Joe Biden speech today, I'm assuming, because you never miss anything. Right. You saw Joe Biden at the Korean Memorial. So if if you want to give Jake Tapper the benefit of the doubt and say we relied to it's not our fault. I don't buy it, but it's not our fault.
We can't accept the blame for it. We should have done better. We should have seen what the American people saw. We should have seen what the right wing saw. We didn't because everybody lied to us. Joe Biden made himself available today. Do you think that there's anybody in Beltway Media that's going to press for Joe Biden on the air and really get to the bottom of what happened and why? Do you think there's any...
Intellectual curiosity amongst the left to figure out who was actually running the country for the last four years? You know, we had a moment of what they called in Russia in the 80s glasnost with the publication of Original Sin last week and with Biden's appearances.
on the view where it was possible to begin asking questions not just about biden's age-related condition but also about the circumstances surrounding his cancer diagnosis and of course all those questions and conversations terminated within within a few days of the publicity of the actual events and now it seems that the media is content along with the democrats and just kind of uh
putting Biden to the side, trying to address the real problems in the coalition. But I think, Dwayne, you hit on it, which is there was no cover up. If there was a cover up of Biden's condition during the four years.
when he was president it was the media and the democrats covering up the fact of his condition to themselves yeah everyone else could see what was going on it was the white house the democratic party and then the media that was trying to convince us that what we were seeing was not real so it wasn't a cover-up it's that
It's a gaslighting, to use that fashionable phrase, where people try to convince you that reality is not what it seems. I think that's the major problem with the way that this book has been marketed. To me, if you want to talk about a cover-up, to me the cover-up is the media. Never. The media knew he wasn't up to it. Everybody, everybody truly saw it. I mean, we were I mean, I was talking about it on a podcast in 2020 with Ed Morrissey every week. We knew Joe Biden was slipping then.
He was not as sharp as he was when he was vice president. It was obvious. It was very clear. The country voted for him anyway. So be it. But to say that he wasn't slipping a little bit. That kind of defies credulity. What the cover up to me is nobody wants to get to if he was not capable of running the country.
Who was? Who was making the decisions? Who was making the foreign policy decisions? Who was actually steering things? Was it Jill? Was it Anthony Bernal? Was it Hunter? Was it a consortium of people? Was Jeff Zients in there? who was making the decisions. That's the story. Every journalist in the world should be following that story, Matt. You know, I completely agree. And of course, it's not happening because the shiny object is moved. It's to uncover what.
actually happened during those four years would be embarrassing for the media and for the Democratic Party. And so we only have names, the list of people that you mentioned. group that called the Politburo by Jake Tapper and Steve Reschetti. Yeah. Yeah. This longtime crew of Biden's, by the way, most of whom were involved in Biden Inc.
in the family business, in profiting off of Joe Biden's name. And then there are, of course, the Obama liberals, the woke Obamaites who are in that White House and doing bad policy as well. We will come back after the break and talk more with Matt Continetti. We've got to talk about all the economic data that came out today, which is really glorious. And it was Elon Musk's day at the Oval Office. And we want to kind of get Matt's take on all of that.
and Elon's impact on the first five months of the administration. Dwayne Patterson in for here. We'll be back with Matt Continetti right after the break. Stick around. Again, Elon gave an incredible service. Nobody liked him. And he had to go through the slings and the arrows.
which is a shame because he's an incredible patriot. The good news is that 90 percent of the country knows that and they appreciate it and they really appreciate what he did. And I gave a little special something we have here. Thank you. A very special. You that I give to very special people. I have given it to some, but it goes to very special people, and I thought I'd give it to Elon as a presentation from our country. Thank you, Elon. Take care.
Welcome back, everybody. Dwayne Patterson for Hugh Hewitt. That was just about an hour and a half ago at the Oval Office. Elon Musk wearing his blazer over his Dogefather T-shirt. Thanks for a job well done by President Donald Trump. I'm joined by Matt Contineni of AEI, of commentary, of Free Beacon, Free Press. I mean, pretty much if it's a thought that needs to be thunk, Matt Contineni is your guy.
Welcome back, Matt. Give me your impression of Elon Musk's day at the White House. What's his impact? Is it long-lasting? Is it short-lived? What do you make of the era of Elon Musk now drawing to a close in the Oval? Well, Dwayne, I think the conventional wisdom has formed around this idea that Elon Musk had very little impact. And yet, when I look at what Doge has done, I see it.
as having significant effects on the federal government. I mean, for one, the federal workforce is much smaller. And there were the first time in... I can remember where instead of constantly expanding, the federal government actually reduced its workforce. And this is a good thing for people who believe in smaller, limited, effective government. The second big consequence of Doge was there was savings. The savings might not have been what Elon Musk.
promised at the outset or lauded as a goal, but they were savings. And if they are embedded and if they're included in this rescission package that is going to make its way through Congress in the coming months. then that will have a lasting effect as well. And finally, I think undercovered in the Doge story is that the Doge team has been very effective in performing and modernizing.
Government IT systems. And there are people who are not fans of Elon Musk, not fans of Doge in the federal government, in some of these agencies, who will tell you that Doge has been helpful in making different systems talk to one another. So they're not stuck in the floppy disk era. So when you consider these three major consequences, I think you have to say that Doge has had a substantial and I think lasting effect on the federal government. I think he's as well.
I think this myth that Doge is now a failure and it's gone away and we're moving on, the whole Doge team is still there. They're still ongoing. And the cabinet secretaries seem to be implementing constantly things that they develop. I don't think the whole program's going away. And I think Elon Musk is still a phone call away if he needs to be, right? I mean, I don't see him going anywhere.
Oh, yeah. Well, he has the key to the White House now, right? He has the key to the White House. He can visit President Trump whenever he wants. And, of course... We know that President Trump gets on the phone quite a bit, especially with rich and powerful people. And there's no one richer than Elon Musk. And he's certainly powerful in his business. And, of course, he is a government contractor as well.
Well, so, yes, he'll still be involved in the process. He might not be as active in politics as I think many believed he would be after his role in the 2024 election. Right. And that's because. His political activism has cost him. The left is very effective at hitting back people who take political stands on the right. This is just a fact. And so when you look at what's happened to Tesla, for example, a company that the left, the environmentalist movement should laud, should champion.
The fact that it has been so hard hit by progressive activists is, I think, supposed to be cautionary to other powerful people. turning conservative but if they look at elon musk's example they'll see that you can weather through it and you can actually have
substantial change if you're true to your convictions. Joined for just a couple more minutes by Matt Cotinetti of AEI. And I... I want to turn to the economic data that came out today, which is spectacular, whether it's the personal household income going up another eight-tenths of a percent on top of half a percent last month and six-tenths the month before. seven-tenths a month before that.
You add that plus the inflation number, both core and traditional inflation being 0.1 for the month, creeping back down to near 2% annualized. You've got the Atlanta Fed projecting. a GDP growth for the second quarter of 3.8% all of a sudden now. And you've got the trade deficit cut almost in half over the last month. Matt Continetti.
Where's where's all the Beltway apologies saying, oh, we're absolutely going to be in a recession. I kicked the show off. I planned the montage of of the bubble back there saying, oh, we're headed for a recession. This is Trump's recession. Everybody knows. Recession's coming. Where's the recession I was promised? I thought these people don't lie to me, Matt. And I'm not a big terror fan.
No. Look, I think what we're seeing again is that expert opinion, especially if it's the conventional wisdom on the left, is often proven wrong. By events. Now, we should say, you know, the first thing is that the stock market is important, but it is not the only barometer of the economy. And what matters more, I think, to voters is what is the state of the job market? What is the level of inflation? Where are interest rates? Is my income rising? And on these metrics,
and we'll set interest rates aside for a moment, the Trump economy is doing pretty well and getting off to a pretty good start. I also think the trade deficit is important. J.D. Vance recently gave an interview, Dwayne, where he was asked, well, what is your... measure of success for this trade war. And Vice President Vance said, if we lower the trade deficit, then the trade wars will have been effective. And so this trade deficit number, I think.
is another arrow in the vice president's quiver when he makes the case for the Trump policies. We should also recognize, though, that Trump has backed away from some of his tariffs. And I think that's improved economic confidence as well as the market. I think he used him exactly how he wanted to use him, which is a bludgeon to be an attention getter.
to start resetting the trade deals. I don't think he ever intended on making them permanent, except for maybe the 10% floor, which I think is fine to be a global tax on us policing the world. I don't think there's a problem with that. Anyway, Matt, thanks very much. Matt Continetti. Follow him at Continetti on Twitter X, at the Free Beacon, at Commentary, and right here every Friday on The Hugh Hewitt Show. America is built on hard work.
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Welcome back, everybody. Dwayne Patterson in for Hugh Hewitt today as he begins his two-week odyssey around Europe with Dr. Larry Arnn and the Hillsdale College folks on their two-week-long cruise. We will, of course, also have guest hosts. in the next couple of weeks by Ed Morrissey of Hot Air, Kurt Schlichter of Town Hall, and Mark Davis at our great Dallas affiliate, AMC60, The Answer. But...
I am joined today by another good friend of the program, one of the finest pundits in all of the United States. That would be Ben Dominich of The Spectator, editor-at-large there, and also the host of the brand-new Big Ben podcast. podcast, which is a must listen. Hello, Ben. How are you? I'm good and good to be with you. This was obviously an eventful week in Washington, so there's plenty to talk about.
We wish Hugh the best on this type of thing. I know that he loves to talk to the Hillsdale folks, and I'm sure he'll be telling great stories on his truck. I think that's almost a certainty. And the only question is whether the Cleveland Homerism will get him tossed overboard before he makes it through the two-week-long cruise. Let's get to... what happened today. I don't want to call it fun, but it's just unnerving to see former President Joe Biden
out there again today to give a speech at the Korean Memorial. I'm not sure why. I'm not sure who decided to put him out there, but... I'll let you listen to it for yourself. Here's the clip that's circulating everywhere. A meaty gaggle caught up with him afterwards. And here's what he had to say. Cut number 17.
And there's also been a lot of discussion recently about your mental and physical capabilities while you were in office. You can see that. I'm mentally incompetent and I can't walk and I can beat the hell out of both of them. Do you want to reply to any of those?
reports and also to the fact that there are some Democrats who are now questioning whether you should have run for re-election in the first place. Why didn't they run against me then? Because I would have beaten them. Do you have any regrets? Now, if you're watching that, you're hearing it on the Salem Radio Network, but if you watched it on the Salem News Channel, he gets right in the face of this poor reporter.
And it's just creepy, Ben. It's just creepy. And he thinks he's, well, can't you see I'm incompetent? Can't you see I can't walk? Look, this is the thing about Joe Biden that we have to. Keep in mind, and I think it's something that has always been true about him, which is that Biden land has this perspective on him that we don't have as a people, which is that.
Everybody counts him out, and then he gets back up and he fights again. And that's kind of the way that I think he thinks about himself. The thing about this incident, though, is, I mean... To have him go out and reintroduce himself in this moment, to say those kind of comments, and also to essentially... give this attitude that he could, I mean, I'm assuming he's referring to Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. Of course he is. Hell out of them.
Well, you know, I'm not sure, you know, if he's fully aware of who those two people are anymore. It's always a matter of conjecture. He just knows there's two of them. But here's the thing. He, I think. In this moment is still very bitter and his attitude toward everything is very bitter. And I still believe that he thinks deep down that if he had been the candidate, he would have beaten Donald Trump. Despite the fact.
that as we know, the poll data was showing that that was not something that was at all in the offing. And in fact, Democrats should thank their lucky stars that they shifted to Kamala. Only because it kept the House close. It kept the House close. Exactly. The House vote could have been disastrous. You know, you could have had a situation where Mike Johnson had a 25 seat majority.
And that's something that really was the reason that that shift had to happen. And Democrats who were smart knew it. That's why you had the Carville of the world coming out and saying this needs to happen.
behind the scenes at least. And that's the thing that, you know, someone who cares about anything other than the career of Joe Biden on the Democratic side would care about. But because Joe Biden only cares about himself, he thinks about this still apparently through the lens that was being shipped to him from Donilon and from others that, you know, Tapper, et cetera, call them the Politburo.
But it really was this insulated view where he thought he was leading or he was, you know, a coin flip election away from being able to beat Trump when he never was. And that's. Something that I think was true even before his disaster debate, when he was clearly losing the election. So, look, to hear this from him now, as opposed to hearing just some kind of grace, some kind of...
Look, you know, people can say what they will say, but I did my best for the country. Some kind of, you know, soft note instead of a note of literally threatening to fight somebody, which he always seems to. go back to as being like his base reaction to being insulted. It's just not heartening at all. I mean, I think this is the time for the old man to be, you know, making peace with people.
and setting the scores aside as opposed to engaging in this type of behavior. And it's a shame. It really is a shame. But I want to know if Jake Tapper this afternoon is going to open up the lead. And challenged the former president to come in and sit down. I mean, wouldn't you watch that interview knowing everything we know now? Of course I would. Maybe you can challenge him to some push-ups, just like Joe used to do.
There's an absurdity to it. But, yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that's interesting, of course, about Tapper's world tour associated with this is it represents truly, I think, a shift on his part. that is very intentional and deliberate, because Jake is very intentional and deliberate, where he reacts to the things that are going on around him, and he says, I have got to realign myself.
in terms of my own positioning, especially given the ownership of that network, to be closer to the center because that's the only way that I can continue in this role. The problem is that I think for a lot of us who've been on the other end of the receiving of hits from Jake Tapper and others at CNN, we don't take that as legitimate for a minute. It's just the fact that...
You are trying to undo the amount of work that you did to hide all the things that were going on around this presidency and not to report things honestly, not to be open about what was going on. basically smear people who came on and were open about it as being, you know, insulting of an old man who has a stutter or what have you. And that's something that I think we all paid attention to. We all saw it on the TV networks and we're not going to give...
Jake Grace in this moment. Just because you can only now can it be reported. Alex Thompson was out there getting hit constantly, and so were, by the way, a group of... Brave Wall Street Journal reporters who, you know, put their peas out there and got slagged by the White House for everything that they were reporting. And we are not we should not. New York Post got buried. Lots. There were lots of reportage that.
have the scars out there. In our couple minutes left, Ben Dominic, I want to ask you about what your thoughts are of Elon Musk's impact, long-term, short-term, medium-term. This was Elon Musk's day. He got the golden key to the White House. Doge isn't going away. Elon's only a phone call away. He's not going to be there every day, but he's still, you know, Donald Trump's going to call him probably two, three times a week. He's still going to have his finger on things.
But what do you think of the first five months of Elon Musk's involvement in the government? Good, bad, indifferent? One thing, of course, to clarify is that this was always coming. You can only do it with government employees. Of course. And so there were a lot of people who were acting as if this was some breakup or something like that when this was not. By statute, yes. One thing, though, that I think is going to be critical going forward is how we see Capitol Hill react.
to the use of rescission by Russ Vogt and by others within the presidential team who are going to basically try to make... these doge cuts much more permanent. And that's something that going forward is going to be of the utmost importance. Otherwise, this is going to be a very short-term blip. You have to have these things actually put... into policy, because if you don't, then the bureaucracy's attitude is the same as the attitude of
China or the Vatican, okay, in the sense that they view things in centuries instead of years. They do not have... the attitude of four-year terms or two-year terms. They think they will be around when Donald Trump and everyone else is gone because they are cement.
And that's not the kind of attitude that is going to be able to be beaten just by executive orders and special government employees. It has to be something that is undone by the Congress. And we'll see whether Republicans on Capitol Hill have the will.
to do that. I certainly hope that they do, because this is the first chance we've had in a very long time to actually see real cuts in government. I think the House will put it through. It needs 60 votes in the Senate, and I adore, I relish the chance to watch Senate Democrats Democrats.
say no to it, and defend all the increased spending. That, to me, is going to be glorious when it comes to the midterms in 26. Ben Dominich, thanks as always. Follow him at BDominich on Twitter X. America is built on hard work. and powered by American energy. Chevron has spent $44 billion with local businesses across all 50 states since 2022, fueling infrastructure and communities, all while strengthening local economies. Last year, Chevron increased U.S. Visit chevron.com to discover more.