← 10 Minute Drill
10 Minute Drill
Trump Resets the Middle East, Dems Fight ICE, Why Clooney knifed Joe, and Bernie’s Record Emissions
00:14:02
In this explosive episode of The 10 Minute Drill, we break down one of the wildest political news weeks yet: 🛫 President Trump heads to the Middle East for a high-stakes diplomatic reset — meeting with Syria’s new president, delivering a...
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Host
President Trump hits reset in the Middle East. We have a demsurrection to stop immigration enforcement and George Clooney's do you know who I am Moment. All of that and so much more today on 10 Minute Drill.
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Senator
Everybody get up.
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Host
Get up.
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President Trump
The story of America is the story of an adventure.
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Senator
I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. We are a nation under God, and I believe God intended for us to be free.
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Host
President Trump continued his travels through the Middle east this week. The theme of his efforts there has really been a larger strategic reset. One of the big focuses of the first few days of this trip was Syria, where he announced his plans to lower sanctions across the board. As he met with Syria's new leader, Congressional representatives like Lindsey Graham have pointed out that it's not as simple because the Senate and House will have to play a role because those sanctions came from Congress. But President Trump's thought there is. They have a new leader, Ahmad Al Shara. He is a former Al Qaeda operative. But President Trump believes they have an opportunity for a fresh start there. Particularly because even though Ahmad Al Shara is a former Al Qaeda operative, but a lot of Americans believe he is a better partner for America than his predecessor, Bashar Al Assad. Syria has been in the middle of a tug of war between Turkey, between Saudi Arabia. They have complex relationships with Israel. President Trump's belief is a freer, more, you know, open to partnership. Syria is better for the entire world. So his goal there is to see if this new leader can be a part of a strategic reset that will help the entire region. While in Saudi Arabia, President Trump had harsh words, but also an invitation for Iran.
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President Trump
I want to make a deal with Iran. I want to do something if it's possible. But for that to happen, it must stop sponsoring terror, halt its bloody proxy wars, and permanently and verifiably cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
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Host
President Trump is doing a balancing act with Iran. He wants to give them the opportunity to re enter the world, to have partnerships. But he's also making clear there are a lot of conditions to that and that is incredibly important. 76% of Americans support destroying all of Iran's nuclear facility. On Wednesday, President Trump was in Qatar where he received a lot of commitments for massive economic investment, investment in the country. A lot of people wish President Trump would use this time in Qatar to highlight Qatar's terrible behavior in funding terrorism, funding Hamas, their October 7th attacks, funding the captivity of Americans, but also funding so many foreign influence campaigns in things like American universities. Qatar has been One of the top funders that has been behind the anti Semitic groups that are plaguing American universities over these last few years. Here's what Senator Kennedy said about Qatar.
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Senator
I trust Qatar like I like. I trust a rest stop bathroom. If they want to be friendly, I want to be friendly back.
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Host
Still to come, President Trump will be in the uae, United Arab Emirates. There's also a lot of conversation about a potential summit between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin of Russia. President Trump has encouraged that and Putin was the original person to put out the idea for this summit. Now, Zelensky, I believe, wanted to basically call his bluff by saying he would go to Turkey and meet face to face with Putin. I think it was smart of him to call Putin's bluff. We've yet to see how Putin's gonna react to that. I think a lot of people hope President Trump will use this to pressure Putin, as Zelenskyy is basically doing everything he can to find an opportunity for diplomacy and a path forward. This is an important trip. There are a lot of questions. President Trump is trying very hard to give fresh starts to a lot of leaders who have troubling and checkered pasts, but peace in that region would be incredibly valuable. And President Trump believes he's working off the momentum from the Abraham Accords in his first term. And he's talked about wanting to expand on that, including bringing countries like Saudi Arabia together with countries like Israel. There's also been a lot of commentary about Israel, President Trump not visiting Israel in this trip and Israel not necessarily being involved in the conversation about things like lowering those sanctions on Syria. I think President Trump likely believes that nobody would question his support for Israel after everything that he's tried to do in support of them for the last few years. And I think he believes right now his focus is on bringing more people to the table so that they can have relationships with America and Israel and other allies. Early Wednesday morning, after a marathon markup session, the House Ways and Means Committee advanced their portion of the Trump big beautiful bill. Their portion is focused primarily on tax policy, on extending Those incredibly important 2017 middle class tax cuts. We shared polling last week about just how important extending these tax cuts are to the American people. One thing that we've talked about quite a bit here is Medicaid. And it has been interesting in these last few days to see media and Democrats really start to push back on Republican efforts to cut fraud, waste and abuse in Medicaid. Here is a quick shot of a poll from cnn.
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Senator
It literally blows my mind. That is what the American people think of this. Major spending cuts to Medicaid. Look at this. 76%.
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Host
I want to deconstruct that poll just a little bit. One thing that we've seen from the Democrats in the media is they ask broad questions like, do you support cuts to Medicaid? Now, Medicaid is an important program that serves a lot of people. So when you ask broadly if people support a cut to it, they're gonna say no. But when you get into the specifics, the specifics of people who shouldn't be on Medicaid, numbers start to change quite a bit. For example, the House Energy and Commerce Committee clarified who will actually lose Medicaid under their proposal. 1.4 million illegal immigrants, 4.8 million able bodied adults who have chosen not to work, which is in violation of medicai, 1.2 million ineligible recipients. Now, when you ask questions like that, do you support removing illegal immigrants from Medicaid? Support for it skyrockets. And that's what this is really about here. We've known for several years now that support for giving taxpayer funded health care to illegal immigrants is incredibly unpopular. You'll remember in the 2020 Democrat primary, they asked the question for Democrats to raise their hands if they support giving taxpayer funded health care to illegal immigrants. And every Democrat raised their hand and it was seen as one of the most radical moments of that pr. But that has become the baseline for Democrats right now. One of the remaining sticking points in the big beautiful bill's progress is an issue called salt, the state and local tax deduction. Now, this is an issue where blue states want a tax deduction that allows them to deduct much higher state and local taxes from their federal tax returns. This is something that President Trump addressed in 2017 where he ended the SALT deduction. Now, Republicans in blue states didn't like that because they want to be able to have their constituents deduct their higher blue state largely from Democrat governance high taxes. But the argument from a lot of fiscal conservatives is we can't ask red states to subsidize the bad governance decisions in blue states. If you are paying a high tax bill in a blue state, you're also seeing your tax dollars go to things like free taxpayer funded healthcare for illegal immigrants in the case of California or in New York, for example, where they paid to have illegal immigrants stay in hotels using tax dollars. But the blue state pushback to that is we have a higher tax base and more tax revenue going into the federal government that actually benefits these red states. And so it all comes out to even Speaker Johnson has a very difficult task ahead trying to sort this out. On Tuesday, we talked about a video of Democrat Representative Lamonica McIver, who was involved in storming an ICE facility in New Jersey and caught on video bowling over federal ICE agents. This has led to a massive discussion about whether these representatives should be arrested for impeding law enforcement, particularly as they try to remove dangerous criminal illegal immigrants. Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries was asked about this this week.
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Senator
What happens if they were to go and arrest these members or if they.
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Host
Were trying to sanction them during the House breaks? They'll find out. That's pretty wild to see from the Democrat leader. Essentially the position of threatening federal agents if they try and do their job and stop House Democrats from impeding their work, which is to remove dangerous criminal illegal immigrants, which again, as we've talked about here numerous Times, has about 90% from the American people. The Department of Homeland Security has reported that there has been a 413% increase in assaults to ICE agents. I think it's also important to recognize this. Representative Lamonica McIver's history of violent actions and violent rhetoric shut down the city. We are at war. There also is another video from this New Jersey altercation of her with ICE agents that I thought was notable. When you hear Representative McIver say, you don't talk to a congresswoman like that. Remember, again, these ICE agents are just trying to do their job and she is physically attacking them and yelling at them. And as they're trying to sort of continue doing their work, she says, you don't talk to a congresswoman like that. This goes back to Democrats trying to get into federal buildings and saying, do you know who I am? Congress has a very important oversight role over the federal government. But you still have to make an appointment, particularly to a dangerous place like an ICE facility where they are housing murderers, rapists and suspected terrorists. Last month we talked about Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, who was arrested after helping a previously deported illegal immigrant evade ice. Democrats talked about how this was President Trump's dramatic escalation in his fight against illegal immigration. But as we got more details, we found that the illegal immigrant that she had tried to help, who was previously deported, had a very, very troubling, violent criminal record. Hannah Dugan yesterday was indicted by a grand jury in Wisconsin. Yesterday, National Review had a very interesting look at the recovery and rebuild efforts after the tragic California wildfire. Three and a half months later, Los Angeles county has issued seven rebuilding permits at a pace of one new building permit every two weeks. Los Angeles county will issue 26 rebuild permits per year and have Pacific Palisades in Altadena rebuilt within 461 years. 461 years. Imagine if you own property in this neighborhood, hearing it's going to take 461 years to get to rebuilding your entire community. That's unacceptable. And when you consider how much those people are having to pay in taxes, this is a major problem for the state of California. We talked last week about the high speed rail project that's going to take, no joke, about 70 years to get partially done and will cost more than $50 billion. When all said and done right now it's already spent $30 billion and not one single piece of track has been laid. When you look at California leaders like Gavin Newsom who believe their state is a model for the country, point to these two things. I don't want someone like Gavin Newsom anywhere near the White House. Checking back in on the Biden Burn books, a book that's about to be released that we've talked about before here by Axios journalist Alex Thompson and CNN's Jake Tapper called Original Sin had two anecdotes that I found to be particularly notable. One was a revelation that Biden's senior staff had discussed the possibility that if he were to win, he would need to be pushed around in a wheelchair. One reason this is notable is all the video we have of both White House staff and members of the media defending his capabilities. He's sharp, he's engaged, he pushes us. The other anecdote that I thought was particularly notable came from George Clooney. Now you'll remember George Clooney was one of the most prominent whistleblowers calling on Joe Biden to drop out. But that only happened after a major fundraiser that George Clooney hosted with Barack Obama and with President Biden. Now, what stuck out to Clooney according to Original Sin was when Joe Biden greeted him, he appeared to not know who he was. Now George Clooney is hosting what will be probably a record breaking fundraiser for the President. So I think for one, he's thinking, I'm doing all this work for you and you can't even remember who I am right now. But for two, he's like, I'm George Clooney, I'm Danny Ocean. And so I think that would be a little bit startling to have the president not remember who you are. But I think it's incredibly notable cuz after this event George Clooney wrote his op ed and called on Biden to drop out, which really started the ripple effect of everyone else calling on Joe Biden to drop out. So when you consider that George Clooney started this process based on a do you know who I am? Moment, I think it's incredibly notable for today's yous can't make it up segment. We actually have a little bit of a throwback to Tuesday's you Can't make it up segment about Bernie Sanders and the idea that he would fly United.
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Senator
Think I'm going to be sitting on a waiting line at United. Waiting. You know what? 30,000 people are waiting.
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Host
Again. Heaven forbid Bernie be forced to be around the unwashed pores that fly United. But this gets better. Fox News reported that the emissions from Bernie's private jet use are more than what a normal person produces in five years. This is an incredible report from Andy Mark Miller at Fox News. My favorite part of this story is the fact that the person accompanying Bernie Sanders on this Fighting Oligarchs tour is none other than Alexandria Ocasio Cortez AOC Herself, who is the original sponsor of the Green New Deal, which among other things called for eliminating air travel. So she's come quite a long way from we must eliminate air travel and cows in the flatulence they produce to now saying I can only, only, only travel privately with Bernie Sanders. What a world. Only here in Washington. That is all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for joining us. Please subscribe Like Leave US a Review Tell your friends. Thanks again.