Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you
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subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your
smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. Joe Biden is out, Donald Trump is in,
and changes are already afoot. An hour ago, the government
shut down the app that the Biden administration was using
to grant mass asylum status ASIE status to everybody that
used the app, CPB one, it was called. They shut
that down at one o'clock. Also, i'm seeing the video
here from Kfox fourteen news. The port of entry in
downtown El Paso temporarily closed Monday morning, moments before Trump's
swearing in ceremony. Trump announced, I mean, and they've got
they got like they're all fully kitted up. They got
the riot shields and stuff, and they just like blocked
off the whole entrance. Trump announced in his inaugural speech
he's declaring a national emergency at the border, reinstating the
Remain in Mexico policy an ending catch and release. Matthew
Continetti over at the Washington Free Beacon, he wrote a
couple of days ago under a piece called Apex Trump,
which I think is a reference to like apex predator,
like top of the food chain kind of thing. Trump
has spent nearly a decade in presidential politics now remade
the Republican Party in his own image. He won the
GOP nomination three times, defeated the Bushes, the Clinton's, Kamala Harris,
and by extension, Joe Biden and Barack Obama. I did
write that I wrote down when I was watching the
inaugural ceremony that Trump was celebrating among a decade's murderer's
row of foes. That's what I wrote down. That you
see him up there and he is surrounded by these
political opponents that he has just laid waste to for
over a decade, and it all began. Do you remember
where it all began? I know he made comments on
like the Oprah Winfrey Show back in the nineties or something.
I'm not talking about that. I mean, he may have
thought about running for office at some point, But where
did it all really begin? For his run in twenty sixteen,
do you remember the Washington or sorry, the White House
Correspondence Association dinner, or, as the journalists liked to call it,
nerd prom That's what they call it, nerd prom It's like,
first off, y'all, ain't nerds. Okay, nerds are smart, so
you don't qualify. Barack Obama got up in front of
the press corps and Donald Trump private citizen, right, although
he had been, you know, doing some public stuff about
you know, Obama's birth certificate and all of that, which
you'll recall, the whole Barack Obama birth certificate thing started
by the Hillary Clinton camp, one of her supporters started
that whole thing during the primary in two thousand and eight, right,
And the Obama administration and his campaign and he himself
could have killed that story immediately when it first started
gaining traction. They could have killed the story immediately, but
they did not because they knew that when people would
promote it and keep promoting it, you would essentially decredentialize people.
People who repeated the birther stuff. And look, I remember
being at this very table sitting in this very spot
speaking into this microphone in the two thousand and eight
election cycle, and we were talking about the facts and
the evidence about the birther issue, and had Obama come
out as he did later and just produce the birth certificate,
it would have been over wanted it. This was part
of a strategy that they employed, which we covered here
also at the time, the stray voltage strategy, which is
real quick at any given moment. This is what his
own campaign people said after the fact. They're strategists. They said,
this is what they would do. And this persisted through
the through his administration, which is, at any given moment,
there's a bunch of political energy that's just in the atmosphere,
and much like static electricity will hop you know, when
you go touch a doorknob or something and it surprises you, right,
that then prompts problems because you can now make a
mistake in the way you respond to it or something.
So if you can direct the stray voltage someplace, right,
then you get people talking about that, but you know
it's coming, so you already have something for it. So
you allow this story to fester and then you can
dismiss everybody as conspiracy theorists and all this, and you
never directly address any of the issue, any of the claims,
any of the evidence, and then eventually, when you do,
you then delegitimize everybody that said anything about it. Anyway,
Donald Trump was into the birther not movement, but the issue,
right he remember, he was good. I think he did.
He may have actually I don't remember if he did
or not, but he at least said maybe even did
hire investigators to go look into it and all of that.
And so Obama gets up in front of the White
House Correspondence Association dinner and it's a rose and people
make fun of each other and tell jokes and you're
supposed to be funny and all of that, and Obama
just starts savaging Donald Trump. And if you ever go back,
it's you really should go back and watch it, because
you can see the point at which Donald Trump realizes
that these people are laughing at him, they're mocking him.
Like at first it's like, Okay, you know, it's a
joke or whatever. And despite what people may think, I
believe Donald Trump does actually have a pretty good sense
of humor. He just is He has a very dry delivery,
and and the way he comports himself. He's not slapstick,
you know, so anyway he is. He is a funny guy.
He has a sense of humor. But Obama just starts
going after him. And when the whole room is laughing
and laughing and laughing and mocking and ridiculing, and it's
like you could see the moment when Trump is like, okay,
And that's what prompted him to run. And ever since then,
right now, granted, the first the first round was it
was a little a little rough, all right. He didn't
really know politics very well. But now he does. Now
he does, and as he has done in business, as
he has done in marketing and his branding campaigns and
his products and all that stuff, with some obvious exceptions
like the failed casino, but in many other cases he
is very very astute, very astute at this kind of stuff.
And as Contineti writes, he clawed his way out of
the political wilderness after twenty twenty by capitalizing on flawed opposition,
the personal and policy failures of Biden and Harris, and
prosecutorial law fare. By the way, have you seen his
official presidential portrait, not the painting the photo. Have you
seen that thing? It is the image of his mugshot.
He's like taking it back. I think, Megan Kelly said,
I think it is what you call it. He's reclaiming
that photo for himself, that image and the lighting on it.
It's like, it's uplt to give this like this menacing
like you would like this menacing look like you would
if you're sitting around the campfire telling ghost stories with
the flashlight under your face, you know, make you look scarier.
In twenty twenty four, he wins the popular vote, brought
Republicans an electoral trifecta, and assumed the powers of the presidency.
In all but name. Trump forms his administration at warp speed.
Wall Street swoons, the world holds its breath. His tariff
talk inspired Mexican President Claudia Shinebaum to float a plan
to reduce Chinese imports. His desire for US territorial expansion
as a means of gaining leverage over China has excited
this columnist and rattled Canada, Panama, and Denmark. His threat
to unleash hell in the Middle East if Hamas doesn't
release hostages prior to inauguration Day produced the first ceasefire
deal in Gaza in over a year. Oh and by
the way, the the leaders of EMA say that they
intend to do more October seventh, now take more hostages.
Not only have Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff
Bezos made peace with the President elect, much of corporate
America has interpreted Trump's reelection as the beginning of an
American glass gnhost from the old Soviet Union openness, you know,
tech censorship, dei climate hysteria. The ahistorical mentality behind the
New York Times is sixteen nineteen project. They are all weakened,
legacy media is hobbled, the Democrats are dazed. In fact,
the former now former White House Press Secretary Caringe Jean
Pierre was asked last week who's going to lead the
Democrat Party after Biden? And she didn't have an answer.
She had no clue. And like to be fair, I
mean it is it is Kareem Jean Pierre, and like
that is usually the case, but this time it was.
It was just because Democrats are kind of rudderless, he says.
The opposition, he says, behaves as if the world began
on November fifth, the election. During the campaign, Biden, Harris
and Obama said Trump was a fascist who would end democracy,
but now Biden is cordial. Their teams collaborated on Gaza.
Harris presided over the certification of the Electoral College. Obama
and Trump chatted amiably at Jimmy Carter's funeral. The Democrat
surrender is widespread. Senator John Fetterman visited Trump at mar
A Lago. Oh I bet I know what he wore.
Forty eight House Democrats joined the Republicans to pass a
bill making it easier to detain illegal immigrant felons. Thirty
one Senate Democrats joined with Republicans to advance a similar
peace of legislation. AOC even dropped her pronouns from her
Twitter bio. And as Trump's power has grown, his public
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and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Let's go over
and talk to GGI. Hey gg, how are you, hey, Pete?
Speaker 2: How are you hey? I'm good, I'm very quickly. Two things.
I saw a video someone had posted a video on
Twitter of Fetterman running into the Capitol and board shorts
and a hoosie and and nook Fuoti, and I tweeted,
please tell me he's going to be wearing a suit
and lo and behold he went into the inauguration and
his hoodie and his board shot.
Speaker 1: For sure, Yeah, not a surprise.
Speaker 2: Well, and I tweeted Senator Soon, I think it's time,
you know, someone needs to read him the Riot Act
because that's kind of beyond the pale. I don't think
you should be in Congress anyway, but that that's just
so insulting, it's so disrespectful. The other thing, I tried
to call the four when you were talking about the pardons,
and I screwed up the timing and everything very quickly.
Do you know if giving the pardons at the end
of the administration is tradition, is legally stipulated or.
Speaker 1: No, it's tradition. They do it at the end so
they can't suffer any of the political ramifications for their decisions. Right.
Speaker 2: So, now that Biden sets the president, I think I
would love to see President Trump give everybody in the
cabinet once they're confirmed, give everybody in the cabinet a
preemptive parson, and then Tasks can go after everybody, and
hag Sets can go after everybody, and Pam Bondi can
go after every I just I think that would be
a riot.
Speaker 1: He should take the he could take the document. He
could take the official document where it lists the names,
and he should just cross out the Biden names and
just write in all of his cabinet members right next
to them. And okay, well I'm going to do this too.
If Joe did it, I'm going to do it too.
Speaker 2: Right, And then when they start the scream as in oligarchy, yeah,
you guys showed us the way, and now we're gonna
do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. See, here's here, here's the problem. And and I
get the humor for you know, uh in which the
comment is intended, although there's probably an element of truth there.
But when when we become monsters to fight monsters, the
world just has more monsters, you know. And this is
this is one of my one of my beefs with
a lot of people that are like the most fervent
Trump supporters, is that there is an abandonment of principle, uh,
in order to get revenge. And what what I keep
warning against is that, just like with Joe Biden, that
once you set these precedents, these slippery slopes become evident
and people you're not going to be able to get
people off the path. Well, you know, people are going
to go and the next one's gonna be worse, and
the next one's going to be worse, and the next
one's gonna be worse.
Speaker 2: I understand, And you know, that's the same that's the
same argument that a lot of people make about Israel
going after terrorists. And I'm trying to negotiate with them,
trying to come to a solution with them that would
improve the lives of their you know, supposedly the people
they care about. But we know what that is.
Speaker 1: They don't.
Speaker 2: I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't work. And so truthfully,
once all of the hostages are home and the bodies
are returned, I would like to see Israel decimate them.
Speaker 1: Well, And that's the same thing right now, I understand,
and I understand that that view as well. And in
war like the objective is to win, is that they
surrender and until and the way you get them to
do that is to you know, either kill more of
their people than they kill of yours, right, or to
get the leadership ousted somehow, and then you know, the
people say, we don't want to keep fighting this, and
they ask their own leaders or whatever. But that's it.
One side wins, one side loses.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Ceasefires don't last, especially over there, so and I understand
that that argument as well. I just I don't know
if I don't know if people have the self restraint
to then say, okay, good, we have you know, we
have banished these people from power. We have won at
some point you know, in the future, like we have
one and so now we'll go back to the way
things were. I don't think I don't think that people
will well, I don't think they had that kind of
self restraint. I appreciate the call, Gigi. Good to hear
from you. All Right, I hope you had a happy
holiday season. But tell me if something like this happened
at your house, your family and friends are gathered around,
maybe y'all are in the living room and you're laughing,
swapping stories, reminiscing, and then somebody says, hey, did remember
those old vhs tapes? Did you ever get them transferred?
And then the room gets all quiet. All eyes are
on Dad, who says, oh, you know, well, I've been
meaning to but I just having gotten around to it. Look,
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five and online at create avideo dot com. Got a
message from Eric on the Twitter machine at Pete Callander.
It's a Pete tweet. Eric says Trump should directly cite
the pardoning of the entire corrupt January sixth committee when
he pardons everyone involved, right, all the j sixers um
Trump War Room account tweeted out that Trump takes his
first official actions Cabinet and subcabinet appointments, acting designations and appointments,
Commission Chair and acting chair appointments, and proclamation ordering flags
to be flown at full massed on all inauguration days
because yeah, this year it was just because of the
coincidental timing of Carter's death, flags ordered it half staff
for you know, thirty days, and then it would have
given this image of like, here's Donald Trump and the
flags are at half staff, and you can imagine what
the Left would have done with that iconography. So from
now on, flags at full staff, and I'm fine with that.
So Matthew Continetti says, is Trump's power has grown, his
public demeanor has changed. He still uses social media to
slam his opponents and critics, but his style in front
of the cameras has shifted. From twenty seventeen sued, indicted, convicted,
and shot. He seems less easily rattled. Now he speaks
more softly. His edgy humor contains fewer insults and more sarcasm,
which I endorse by the way, as one who is
fluent in sarcasm. He seems to have a sense of purpose,
and he trusts his lieutenants. He often displays the Buddha
like half smirk, half smile he had throughout the RNC
the convention in July. So here's the problem, though, that
he's going to be faced right. He's going several actually,
but one is when you look back over history, second
terms are usually not great for incumbents. Okay, they tend
to be consumed by either scandal or hubris or both.
Reagan had Iran, Contra Clinton, Monica Lewinsky. Bush overreaching on
the social security and immigration, and then he got bogged
down in Iraq. Obama made the nuclear deal with Iran,
he went left on immigration, race, terrorism, same sex marriage,
transgender rights. Trump's challenge isn't winning power, it's wielding it.
If Trump wants to succeed and enable his successor to
carry on his legacy into the twenty thirties, he'll have
to avoid the fate of his predecessors. And Continetti offers
up some suggestions. Don't overreach, use power wisely, focus on
numbers like market in disease, jobs, inflation, income, border crossings,
crime rates. Throw America an unforgettable two hundred and fiftieth
birthday party in twenty twenty six. That's good. Like that alone,
I am psyched about, like, celebrate America, right, have a
great two hundred and fiftieth birthday for the country. And
I just don't think it would have been the same
with Harris. I really don't. I think the party would
be a party I would not want to attend, you know.
Help Los Angeles recover in time for the Olympics in
twenty twenty eight. Help western North Carolina. These are the
tests of a successful second term, and Donald Trump has
four years to pass them. Now. Fox News Digital got
an exclusive look at more than two hundred executive actions
that Trump is fixing to take border security, energy, reducing
the cost of living, ending DEI programs in the government,
ending catch and release, pausing all offshore wind leases, terminating
the electric vehicle mandate, abolish the Green New Deal, withdrawal
from the Paris Climate Accord, takes several major steps to
assert presidential control over the federal bureaucracy. A Trump official
that talked to Fox News about this said, Trump's going
to sign multiple omnibus executive orders that each contain dozens
of major executive actions. So this is what is probably
going to dominate the news cycle for the next week.
I would say as as people begin reading through the
actions and I'm sure lawsuits start getting filed. Declare national
border ye, declare a national border emergency. Direct the US
military to work with the Department of Homeland Security to
fully secure the southern border. Establish a national priority to
eliminate all criminal cartels operating on US soil. Trump will
also direct designations of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, which
the official said will unlock new authorities to achieve the
Trump Homeland Security Mission reinstitution of the Remain in Mexico policy,
direct the military to construct a new area of border wall.
Trump is also going to quote fully unleash Alaskan energy,
which this official described as essential to US national security.
Axios has an article on this and it talks about
like a to create conditions that facilitate investment, job creation, YadA, YadA, YadA.
But they mentioned here the power to fuel AI requires
energy thirsty data centers, and this is what is refocusing
attention around this issue. You need a lot of energy
to run AI. It's super energy intensive. So one incoming
energy advisor told Axios, we are in an AI race
with China as well as other nations. Trump's team aims
to ease construction of fossil fuel infrastructure, such as pipelines.
They're going to overturn a bunch of Biden era policies
like the slow down of oil and gas leasing in
the Gulf of America aka Golf of Mexico, EPA, greenhouse
gas regulations on power plants, vehicles, and oil and gas
infrastructure that's going to get reversed. Overturn a pause on
new LNG liquid national liqu with natural gas export licenses
to major markets. Restrictions on oil gas and mineral projects
in Alaska will be overturned. Back to the Fox News story,
Trump will fully reform federal bureaucracy, or at least he's
promising to, by re establishing presidential control over the career
federal workforce and make clear to federal workers that they
can be removed from posts for failing to comply with
executive directives. Right, this is the quote deep state. These
are the people, the bureaucrats that work through any administration,
and if there's an administration in there that they don't like,
they know all the ways to slow walk stuff, to
throw sand in the gears to prevent the executive that
was elected by the people from fixing things and doing
things by the throwing of the sand in the gears right.
And he wants to strengthen presidential control over senior government
officials and implement new merit based hiring reviews and force
federal workers to go back to work in person. What
was the story we did a couple of months ago
where they did some audit or something. They found out
like two thirds of all the federal employees weren't even
on the job. They were all remote work. It's like,
why do we have all these buildings?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Are you even working from home? Also, he wants to
sign an executive order to establish biological sex definitions. All right,
if you're listening to this show, you know I try
to keep up with all sorts of current events, and
I know you do too, And you've probably heard me
say get your news from multiple sources. Why. Well, because
it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've
been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and
it's a website, and it combines news from around the
world in one place, so you can compare coverage and
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stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature
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only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News
as they make the media landscape more transparent. So what
is Trump going to do? He's got to govern now
clock is running. He promised a whole bunch of executive orders.
Right they're calling it a shock and awe campaign that
we have never seen before, which is a little bit
of marketing there. But we'll see what they do. One
of them is an executive order to atabablished biological sex definitions.
It's called the Defending Women from Gender Ideology, Extremism and
Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government Executive Order, or
as I call it, the DWGI, e ERB TFFG, or
the Yeah, I don't even know what that would be.
The Executive Order establishes government wide the biological reality of
two sexes and clearly defines male and female. The Free
Press The website is the FP dot com. They got
the exclusive here on what the Executive Order will say.
It says all radical gender ideology, guidance, communication policies and
forms are removed. Agencies will cease pretending that men and women,
that men can be women and women can be men
when enforcing laws to protect against sex discrimination. Women is
defined as an adult human female. I don't know who
needs to hear that, but apparently a very large chunk
of the population still does. So that is what a
woman is. It is an adult human female. The Executive
Order directs that government identification like passports and personnel records,
reflect the biological reality and not self assessed gender identity.
It ends the practice of housing men in women's prisons
and taxpayer funded transition surgeries for prisoners or not just surgeries,
just all transition for the male prisoners. The Executive Order
ends the forced recitation of preferred pronouns, and this includes
protection in the workplace and in federal funded entities like schools.
In reading the order, it's clear that lawsuits challenging the
new directives will start stacking up quickly. The order, for example,
asserts that quote all radical gender ideology, guidance, communication, policies,
and forms are removed end quote. This is far from
mere symbolism. US passports will revert to offering exclusively male
and female options. Right. This was changed by the way
under the norm protecting Biden administration in twenty twenty two,
where they let citizens choose X as their gender, which
we all know it's not X, it's Twitter. But the
proviso is stipulated that what people select must reflect biological
reality and not self assess gender identity. So expect a
lawsuit on that. But the policy or the administration rather
says it is ready for the litigation. It's a fight.
The new administration seems to relish. Both officials that the
Free Press talked to said the executive order has the
potential to broaden the President's support because they say, look
at the polling on this, this is just going to
make us stronger. We have come so far from HB two.
I'll tell you what the executive order does not address
one of the most contentious areas of transgender activism, though
gender affirming care quote unquote from minors, meaning putting gender
distressed young people on a fast track to transition and
a lifetime of medication. The Biden administration supported those treatments ardently,
so even as other Western nations began to restrict them
and dozens of US states began to ban them. Asked
about why the new executive order doesn't deal with this,
the senior officials said, quote, This executive Order is the
first of many. The order ends with a sweeping statement
about the fundamental issue the White House believes is at
stake in this order, it says, quote, men and women
are equal but have obvious sexual differences. If federal policies
promote such an obvious falsehood that men can become women,
the government will forfeit all credibility. The government must maintain
a commitment to recognizing biological reality to maintain the trust
of the American people. There was an old line. I
forget who said it. I think it was Sultsan Eatsen.
Out of talking about the Soviet Union, he said, you know,
we know they're lying talking about the government. We know
they're lying. They know they're lying, they know that we
know they're lying, and they know we know that they
know they are lying. Everybody is aware of this. They
just want to make you say it. That's the point.
Everybody knows it's a lie, and everybody is going along
with the lie, knowing that the people everybody's lying. That
does not a high trust society make what else? And
all DEI programs across the federal government, establishing the new DOGE,
the Department of Government Efficiency, hiring freeze, gain control over
foreign AI and NGO funding. That's non government organizations. That's
a huge problem, these NGOs that make millions, in some
cases billions of dollars. James O'Keefe just got another one
of his sting operations with somebody out of the government.
I forget. I think maybe the EPA who was talking
about the billions of dollars that they have been just
like pushing out the door in the final hours of
the administration of the under Biden and he talks about
how you know, we've we've pushed out like fifty billion
dollars to these NGOs. Sod it be good to be
able to go there after I'm out of a job
here like that's the game, sign a presidential memorandum directing
all agencies and departments to remove all federal actions that
increase costs for families and consumers. I'm not sure what
kind of limiting principle there is on that, but I
will say I am hopeful today as Trump said that
the golden age of America begins right now. All right,
that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much
for listening. I could not do the show without your
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