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Real America’s Voice
Just the News No Noise with John Solomon and Amanda Head, November 17th, 2025
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This is an iHeart podcast.
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This is the story of the One. As head of maintenance at a concert hall, he knows the show must always go on. That's why he works behind the scenes, ensuring every light is working, the H Vac is humming, and his facility shines with Grainger's supplies and solutions for every challenge he faces. Plus 24. 7 customer support. His venue never misses a beat. Call quickgranger.com or or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
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Good evening, America. Happy Monday, and welcome to the latest edition of JUST THE news. No noise. I'm your host John Solomon reporting to you as always from the Nation's capital, Washington, D.C. before we get into all the news that happened tonight, just a quick programming note. President Trump is set to speak at the McDonald's impact summit tonight. We'll address what his administration is doing to lower costs for the American people. Once his remarks begin, we're going to break away, take you to them so you can watch them live, unfiltered, like you always get to do here at Real America's Voice. Now we start tonight with more reporting on the Trump Justice Department's attempts at getting accountability for the weaponized justice system under the Obama and Biden administrations. And this latest bit of news deals with. You got it. Former FBI Director James Comey, the judge overseeing the case against Comey, excoriated the Justice Department earlier today over its handling of grand jury proceedings. Judge William Fitzpatrick said that he, quote, the record points to a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps, missteps that led an FBI agent and a prosecutor to potentially undermine the integrity of the grand jury proceeding. We'll see if the judge is right about that. Well, what does it mean for the obstruction of justice case against the former FBI director? Well, we'll see. It depends on how U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan, who is currently prosecuting the case, answers the judge's motion today or his comments today. I want to mention one thing here. It's possible that some of the stuff that's going on in the grand jury right now, which the judge is concerned about, may be aimed at getting a superseding indictment. Been doing a lot of reporting on that. We'll keep close attention to that. But we've got a lot more reporting on this as new information comes to light. We may have some more of it tomorrow. Now, speaking of weaponized justice, a lot of other important developments today. Senator Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, did an interview with me over the weekend. He divulged that he's planning to introduce legislation to allow any Americans to, not just senators whose privacy was violated by ex Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith's sweeping investigation and conservatives to sue the government for damages, damages to their privacy, damages to their constitutional rights. He made that news on an episode of my podcast, John Solomon Reports. And he pushed back against House Republicans such as Speaker Mike Johnson, who have threatened to strip the provision through future legislative action. Graham said the House members shouldn't strip the provision, but rather expand it so that all Americans who were injured by the Smith and other FBI investigations have a path for recourse. We'll see how that ends up. But a lot more going on in that. With that, let's turn to my amazing co host Amanda Head. She's got a lot more headlines. Amanda, what are you tracking tonight?
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Speaking of folks on the Senate side of the aisle, I want to start with Chuck Schumer because the Democrats, led by Senator Schumer just got done holding the government hostage primarily for more funding for illegal immigrant health care. And that I obviously failed pretty spectacularly. But now they're looking to release the Epstein files. Yes, the same Epstein files that they wanted absolutely nothing to do with while they were in power during the Biden presidency. And it seems that they want to release them now because they are looking for any way that they can to hurt President Trump. But, you know, you gotta, you gotta ask the question. If anything damning about the President was in these files, don't you think that they would have been released before then? Candidate President Trump battled former President Joe Biden. You know, when Democrats had the power to release anything and everything that the government had on Jeffrey Epstein? Well, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was asked about that, but I don't think that he really understood the question.
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Watch.
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Why wouldn't they have been released the last four years when President Biden was in office?
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Well, that's the question every American is asking. Not every American, but so many Americans are asking, what the hell is he hiding? Why doesn't he want them released when you don't want something like this released? When even a whole lot of Republicans are calling for the release? His own party members, people ask the question, what's he hiding? It's got to be answered by releasing the files.
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D
Okay, just clarify. That journalist asked why they weren't released under the Biden administration. And Chuck Schumer, maybe a Freudian slip.
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Said, what the hell?
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That's what everybody's asking. Yes. Now, as funny as that is, the President has now called on Republicans to vote on releasing the files. And that vote will come tomorrow. So this issue will hopefully finally be put to bed. Now the real question is, will this end up blowing in Democrats faces? All right, turning to New York now, where the Big Apple is about to get a big taste of democratic socialism with the election of Zohran Mamdani. And they aren't stopping there. A Democratic socialist NYC councilman has filed paperwork to run against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jamaica Jeffries. Chiosay, is the councilman preparing to challenge Jeffries, and apparently he's doing so against the wishes of Mayor elect Mamdani. Now that according to the New York Post, Jeffries ended up endorsing Mamdani for NYC mayor. So, John, it looks like Democrat socialism is the future of the Democrat Party, at least in New York.
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Or it's the future of a civil war in the Democratic Party. I'll see what happens. That'd be very interesting to see a couple breaking news things that have happened in the last few minutes. Amanda, why everybody was talking about Epstein and the fight between MTG and Trump. You know, the Trump administration was doing, arresting 130 illegal immigrants in Charlotte. The first crackdown in that city. City's a lot safer today than it was 48 hours ago. Those numbers just came out a few seconds ago. And United nations just approved Donald Trump's Gaza peace plan. Even the UN Realizes Donald Trump's got the plan here. That just happened a few minutes ago. That gives tremendous momentum for the next piece of this, which is disarming Hamas. But a big, big deal there. All right, earlier today we had a chance to talk to Congresswoman Harriet Hagerman about all these things, including the weaponization of the Justice Department. Really interesting comments. We want you to watch them take a look. All right, folks, joining us now from the great state of Wyoming, Congresswoman Harriet Hageman. Congresswoman, great to have you on the show.
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It's great to be back, John.
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All right, we have so much to absorb now that the government's coming back to life and off of its long break. There are a lot of people questioning do we need a lot of the agencies that we didn't notice were even there when they were gone? Is this a once in a generation opportunity maybe to do some real trimming of the fat?
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I think that the head of the Department of Education has indicated her willingness to make that exact point. Secretary McMahon has said over and over again this just confirmed why the federal Department of Education is totally unnecessary. All the kids went to school. The Teachers continued to be paid, the buses continued to run the extracurricular activities. I think that that is a perfect example of an agency that, number one, should never have been created in the first place. But number two, after being up and running for well over 40 years, we now know that it sucked an awful lot of money away from our states and away from actually educating kids. And I think is largely responsible for the problems and challenges we have in education. So I think that the president has recognized this, has said it repeatedly. That's why he put her in this position. I've advocated for it for a long time. I know that our educators and our leadership in Wyoming is fully capable of educating our kids without interference from Washington, D.C.
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Congresswoman, the typical theory is that you go through adversity and you come out stronger on the other side. And I feel like for Republicans, you guys are possibly even more united to get things done that are left on the priority list up until midterms. Tell us what some of those priorities are and do you feel like the caucus is all together on most of these?
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So I do, and I think that that was demonstrated over the last six weeks. We are very cohesive right now. When you have people like Chip Roy as well as Ralph Norman on the more conservative side, along with where I am, as well as our liberals, maybe some of those more liberals or more moderates, all of us came out in support of this package and we were able to get it done actually, quite quickly last Wednesday. Some of my priorities include a bill that's up this week and that is reversing the Biden administration's Buffalo rmp. And what that had to do with is that's a resource management plan that was issued by the Biden administration to basically stop all coal production in the Powder River Basin in the state of Wyoming, and then a portion of that is also in Montana. Wyoming is the largest coal producer in the nation. Without us, you're not going to be turning on the lights and you're going to get awfully cold in the wintertime. We are critically important for protecting this country, for making sure that people can heat their homes, turn on their lights, have working refrigeration. It's a national security issue. But the Biden administration and the Obama administration before him, they, they tried to destroy our coal industry, actually our oil and gas industry as well. And this week we're going to be voting to reverse the Biden administration's illegal Buffalo rmp, where they attempted to basically stop mining in the state of Wyoming. So that's one of my priorities this week, another priority that I have is delisting the grizzly bears again. In Wyoming, we have done a phenomenal job investing well over $50 million in recovering the grizzly bear. It's a huge success. We have well over 1100 bears in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The recovery goal was 500. Even the Yellowstone national park and the Forest Service or the Fish and Wildlife Service, folks, they know that we've done a phenomenal job of recovering the grizzly bears. But the bureaucrats and the radical environmental groups and the activist judges in Montana have prevented us from doing so. So I'm hoping that legislatively we can get that on the floor here sometime soon. There's also other priorities that we have that I think Mike Johnson and Steve Scalise have put out there. And I support President Trump's agenda. We need to continue to support the work that he's doing securing our border, making sure that we are performing for the American people.
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Yeah.
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So very important. Congresswoman, you are a constitutional lawyer and a civil libertarian at your heart. And everything that we have seen in the last three months of revelations about Arctic Frost and all the other investigations, it's obvious now that we operate in a system where general warrants are back in place. You can drag the ocean looking for one rusty license plate if you got a political motive. And there's no stopping it. The judges don't stop you. No one seems to stop you. Is there a moment in our Republicans behind the scenes talking about protecting Americans privacy better? Whether it's the volunteering of our financial records without even a warrant that occurred in January 6, or the phone records that not only affected members of Congress, but everyday Americans.
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So it is clear that under the Biden administration and the FBI and many of the people whose names have become common knowledge in the household of Americans, is that they were pretty insidious people who don't believe in our Constitution. They violated our First Amendment rights, our Fourth Amendment rights, our Fifth Amendment rights. It's pretty astounding when you start digging into what they did in terms of Arctic Frost, taking Scott Perry's phone, Representative Perry's phone, investigating and diving into and getting the records from some of our senators and our representatives as well as everyday Americans, they truly were lawless. One of the bills that I am pushing forward with is called the First Amendment Accountability Act. And what it would do is for anybody who violates any federal employee who violates any one of our First Amendment rights, our freedom of speech, our freedom to assemble, our freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom. You know, those five pillars of the First Amendment. Any federal employee that would violate one of those, we can hold them liable for damages, for injunctive relief, and for attorneys fees. I'm trying to get to the fact our senators, our representatives, our citizens, they have the right to communicate with each other and with other people without the federal government spying on them. So I think that Arctic Frost is not only a violation of the Fourth Amendment, it's clearly a violation of the First Amendment. And with the bill that I'm proposing, I would give these folks a private cause of action. Everybody, not only elected officials, but everyday citizens. Another example was during the terrible storms last year. We know that FEMA was not assisting those people who had Trump signs in their front yard. Well, that is classic viewpoint discrimination, and it violates the First Amendment. Had my bill been in place, all of those individuals would have been able to sue the federal government and the individuals who made that decision to recover damages for the violation of their First Amendment. So. So I'm going to hold these people accountable. I think it's absolutely critical that we continue to push forward with this kind of legislation so that we can protect the constitutional rights. Where this would also be important is if they ever tried to pull another Covid again. You know, with COVID they stopped us from going to churches, they stopped us from peaceably assembling, they stopped our freedom of speech, they wouldn't allow us to communicate. Under my bill, they would never be able to pull that kind of a trick again to use something like Covid to strip us of our constitutional rights.
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If I could just follow up. So there was an effort in the Senate bill that came across that gave some senators action to go back and sue for what had happened to them. Lindsey Graham told me over the weekend, and we wrote this story, that he's going to expand that to anyone who was affected by Jack Smith's investigation. Is there any appetite for creating a reparations fund or some action for people who've already been harmed or spent millions of dollars defending themselves when they were innocent all along?
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Well, I think that we already have laws in place to do some of that right now. Anybody who was affected where the FBI or the Biden administration was snooping through their records, they already have a Fourth Amendment right. They have a Fifth Amendment due process right. They have an equal protection right. So there's already laws on the books that would protect some of that with my First Amendment Accountability Act. Really what I'm focusing on is specifically the First Amendment, which has components of this, as I indicated, when I use my phone and I send an email or a text to somebody that's private, that is between me and that person, the federal government has no right to get that information unless I either get consent or to use your term, they can demonstrate that it's not a general warrant to go after that kind of information. So we already have mechanisms in place. And I actually encourage people to be looking at what Jack Smith did and see what kind of whether they were impacted by the decisions that he made. But I want to do it for the First Amendment because again, it is broader than this, as I've indicated, such as with the COVID nonsense that came down several years ago. It also would go to like what the Biden tried to do with setting up a disinformation council. Clearly that was intended to violate our First Amendment rights.
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D
Congresswoman, before we let you go, speaking of Biden, I want to ask you about this hot button issue, the Epstein files. I've seen a number of Democrats on social media saying why won't press President Trump authorize this? Why doesn't he support Republicans in doing so? First of all, he is supporting Republicans in doing that. But they keep getting asked the question they will tag Grok on X and say at grok. How many times did this congressman or congresswoman argue for these files to be released under Joe Biden? Then there's another clip of Chuck Schumer who doesn't seem to realize that he's being asked about why these files weren't released under Joe Biden. Do you think the Democrats realize that this might be an incident of the car catching up with the bumper?
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Well, I think what the Democrats are doing is they're trying to find any way that they can that they can attack President Trump and the Republicans. It doesn't matter what the subject matter is. I think what you're going to find, even with the Epstein files, I think what you're going to find there is that there are a lot of Democrats that are implicated of having a relationship with him. What that means, I don't know what the answer to that is, but this is just, again, this is deflection. This is the. It demonstrates the unseriousness of the way that they approach issues that are important to average everyday American citizens such as me. This is, it is important that we identify the Democrats efforts to deflect attention from their failures when they are presented in front of us. And I think this is an example of that.
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Yeah, well said. I think they may rue the day that they voted for the release of these files, but we'll wait and see. Congresswoman, as always, such a great honor to have you on the show. We always enjoy when you come on.
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Thank you.
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Yeah, thank you so much. So thoughtful. All right, folks, quick commercial break. When we come back, Amanda sat down earlier today with Congressman Randy Fine.
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Great interview.
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I can't wait till I watch it. We're going to have that next right after these.
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And I want to congratulate you. You are with an incredible company and I'm thrilled to be here with the men and the women who are really the heart and soul of one of the greatest, most admired and most successful companies in the history of the world. Frank. The one and only McDonald's. I've gone there a couple of times and I'm honored to stand before you as the very first former McDonald's fry cook ever to become president of the United States. And I actually was there for about 30 minutes and that was 30 minutes longer than Kamala was there. Right. Despite her job at McDonald's that didn't work out too well. And the person at McDonald's that informed us off the record, that she never worked there, whoever you are, we appreciate that. That was very nice. But I want to thank, as you know, the famous Sundar and Sergei Sergey Brin, these are two guys that own and run a place called Google. They called me the following day after I did that McDonald's little because it was, it wasn't a commercial. You got it for nothing. It was a skit. And they told me that it and I didn't know them. I just, I said, who are they? They own Google. I said, that's pretty good. That's not bad. And that it received more hits than anything else in the history of Google and that records. It still stands. So congratulations on, congratulations on allowing us to use it. But you've made a very. Superstars said they'd pay them millions of dollars to speak and as president, I'm doing this damn thing for nothing. Okay. And you know what? Because it's you, it's an honor to do it and it's an honor to be here. Really. The job that McDonald's has done is incredible and that you're doing. But as you may have heard, I'm also one of your all time most loyal customers. I really am. Well, I think that's good. I'm pretty sure that's good. While other politicians fly around on campaign planes stocked with expensive catering on Trump Force One prior to ascending to Air Force One, which is quite a nice plane. Also, we served only McDonald's almost every time. On occasion, we couldn't find one, which is pretty hard to believe we'd go another route, but we really did. You fed us very well. And I even got Bobby Kennedy to eat a Big Mac. And he told me he loved it. He didn't want that publicized. He told me he loved it. I thought it was great. I want to thank McDonald's chairman and CEO Chris Kamchinski, who had just met backstage, I guess, gave him a little piece of my speech signed. I said, do you want to keep this? You can either hang it, you can give it to somebody, you can throw it away. I don't care. But I don't stay on the speech too long anyway. So usually those speeches aren't too accurate, what I give. But McDonald's USA president is here. Joe Erlinger. Joe, wherever you may be, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Good job. Along with everyone from the International Franchise association, which does really fantastic here. I've heard from many people you do a fantastic job. So thanks as well to two former McDonald's operators now serving in Congress, Representative Kevin Hearn and Chuck Edwards. Are you here, fellas? Come on, fellas. And they're warriors, those two. They're warriors. Thank you very much. Great job. And of course, let me thank the people who truly keep the McDonald's magic alive. The incredible franchisees. And you got a lot of them here today. Yeah. And you're the heart and soul. And they would tell you that all the time. They tell me that you carry on the commitment to what Ray Kroc said he wanted from every McDonald's restaurant. Perfection. Have you heard that? Perfection. That was very strong. Ray liked to say that if you think small, you'll stay small. And that's why no one thinks bigger than McDonald's. Not in your industry, and probably never will. I don't know if anybody can ever catch you. I doubt it. Every single day, you feed an incredible 1% of the entire world population. 70 million meals every day. An amazing 1 in 8Americans works behind the counter of a McDonald's franchise at some point in their lives. Yeah, we heard about that. I heard that. I heard about that. Wasn't true in that particular case. But for tens of millions of our citizens, the road to the American dream starts beneath the golden arches. Beautiful golden arches. So to each and every one of you, thank you and congratulations on 70 years of. Of American greatness. Congratulations. And, you know, I just might add, this is also the golden age of America, because we are doing better than we've ever done as a country. Prices are coming down and all of that stuff. And you know, they talk about different terms for that. But I will tell you that nobody has done what we've done in terms of pricing. We took over a mess. We had the highest, think of it, the highest inflation in the history of our country. They say 48 years, it was the history of our country. And now we have normal inflation. We're going to get it a little bit lower, frankly, but we have normal. We've normalized it. We have it down to a low level, but we're going to get it a little bit lower. We want perfection. You know, you always want 1%. I don't know if anybody knows you don't want zero. Zero can be bad. Then you start going the other route. That's no good either. Then you say, what's worse, deflation or inflation? But we have it almost at the sweet spot and prices are coming down on different things. One of your groups that you admire, I admire Walmart, came up last week and they announced that Thanksgiving this year is 25% less. All of the accoutrements that Thanksgiving is 25% less than it was last year under sleepy Joe Biden. So that's a big statement. And others have followed up by saying just about that. And to your leader who when we met, I said, how are you doing with prices? Prices are coming down. He said we were up 40% because of Biden and inflation. And they're coming down and they're coming down rapidly. So I hope that all continues to go. But we're really doing well as a country. Most importantly, however, I will tell big picture, we have over $17 trillion being invested in our country in nine months. It's now just about ready to crack 18. And by the end of one year, we will have about 20 to 21 trillion dollars invested on our country. That's more by 10 times the highest amount ever invested in any country ever before. And it's largely because of tariffs and I think November 5th election, but it's the largest amount as an example. So if we have 20 or 21 in one year, 21 trillion, think of what that is. That's car factories. That's AI. It's everything. They're all coming back because of the tariffs. They're all coming back because they don't want to pay 15, 20, 30, 100% tariff. It wasn't that complicated. People are saying, you know, Trump was right. It really Wasn't that complicated, but. But it's been amazing. As an example, if you take me at 20 for one year, Sleepy Joe Biden, you know what? He was less than one for four years. And if they got elected, they would have been at minus 10 because people were moving out of the country in record numbers. And welfare and other charges were increasing at levels that nobody has ever seen before. So you would have had double and maybe 50%, maybe, maybe literally more than they've ever seen. Welfare was going up, everything was going up. Government jobs were going up, real jobs were going down. So you would have had that catastrophe. And on top of it, instead of 20 trillion coming in, you would have had 10 trillion leaving our country. In other words, you would have had a catastrophe. You probably would have had a bankrupt country. You are so damn lucky that I won that election. I'm telling you, It's actually true. I hope the press covers that. You know, some busy. He got up and he rented and raved and bragged. I don't brag, I just give you the facts. It's true. But those in this room know the people of our country better than anybody. And before the sun rises, you're up serving hot coffee to construction workers, nurses and police officers on the way to the job. In the evening, you stand ready with the fast dinner and a smile for busy moms and their children as they race from school to soccer practice. Really, as it's Americana and late at night your lights are often the only ones still glowing when the long haul trucker pulls up for a good meal and a best Coca Cola in America. Best Coca Cola. And I bet they use real sugar in your Coca Cola. You know they didn't in the United States. I said to the head of Coca Cola, you got to go to sugar. They do in other countries. And you know what? They went to sugar. Isn't that nice? I said, you got to go to sugar. Just like I said, why is the Gulf of Mexico called the Gulf of Mexico? I said, we're changing the name and now it's the Gulf of America has nothing to do with McDonald's, but maybe it does because it's very nice cycle. We have 92% of the shoreline. They have 8%. I wouldn't say I made a lot of friends in Mexico, but they still like me. Wasn't that a good change? Seriously, wasn't that beautiful? And it was done in an instant. You know, it's like normally you think a thing like that would take years. This took like 10 minutes. I asked Somebody, good lawyers in my office. I said, would I be able to change the Gulf of Mexico? Is that possible? To the Gulf, sir? It's been that way for 350 years. You know, they were here 100 years before us. We're 250. There were 350. It's been called the Gulf of Mexico, sir, for 350 years. I said, that's not the question. Am I able to change it? Yes. What do I do? Just give us the order, we'll do it. And I did, and we changed it. And everybody is happy. Well, not everybody, but most people. Most people are happy. But it's great prestige for our country. You know, it's tremendous prestige for our country, and that's good for McDonald's and that's good for everybody else. As president, I want you to know that I'm fighting every day to support small businesses like yours and the citizens that we all serve. And together we're fighting for an economy where everyone can win. From the cashier starting her first job to a franchisee opening his first location to the young family in a drive through line. I've been on that line many times, actually. That line was incredible. In the commercial, right? It wasn't a commercial, but they have the line. The people had no idea. So I made the french fries. The guy was really good. He had a great wrist. He was. He's going like, sir, yeah, I. It was not that easy, but I got it sort of finally. Not the greatest, but pouring it in, asking them all sorts of stupid questions. But it was very interesting. Amazing. A little thing is not. It's a little complex, right? To father and son over there that own a lot. They're very rich people. But I'll tell you what, I asked, how many do you have, Sir, I have 59. I said, you're rich. But. But, you know, nobody knew in the line. That line was a long line at 25,000 people. So somebody let them know we were coming. It was toward the end of the campaign, and after I did the french fries and did some other things, I then stood at the window and the people would drive up a little bored, in all fairness, you know, it is. I mean, they're waiting for a hamburger, okay? So they drive up like this. They'd look over, whoa. Every one of them. And it was fascinating. Every one of them. It was. The response was incredible. Almost like I knew I was going to win. When I saw that, I knew because the response was love. It was great. They had a good time. But we did. I think 12 people, every one of them had the same response. They drive up, they there, they say, get that. Getting a little cash ready. And I look over and it was, some did a double take, some went like that. Whoa. But it was, it was sort of an amazing moment. You know, I did a garbage truck also, right? And everybody and I thought, when I spoke with Sergey and Sundar, I said, yeah, but the garbage truck was equal, wasn't it? They said not even a garbage truck was great. Not even a contest to McDonald's. And that's because we had the power of McDonald's. I mean, it was an amazing thing. I thought the garbage, frankly, I thought the garbage truck would have won. And he said, they said it was good, but it wasn't even close. So that's a tribute to what you've built, really. It really is a tribute to what you built. But there's still a lot of work to do and we're making tremendous progress. 1.9 million more American born workers are employed today than when I took office. Think of that. 1.9 million more today. And these are American born workers. Nobody thought that was possible. And we have the strongest borders in the history of our country. Nobody comes in unless they come in legally. You see the numbers. Everyone thinks it's impossible. A year ago, millions of people were storming our borders. Today they only come in if they come in legally. And wages for hourly workers are rising at the fastest pace in 60 years. And sometimes you might say, was that good or bad? It's great for you. The minimum wage thing, you'll have to be talking about. You're going to have to fight. We were talking about California, Gavin Newscomb from California. And I knew he's laying siege on the minimum wage. And you people probably know, because that's a very complex subject. And you people probably know better than anybody the impact one way or the other, good or bad. And you're going to let your local congressmen, your senators know about it. But in nine months we've lifted over 600,000Americans off of food stamp. And that's a record. And it's because we really have a strong economy. I mean, we're building thousands and thousands of factories all over this country. Wait till they open up. You know, you're going to see something like we've, I think, like we've never seen before. You know, we lost our auto industry. 54% of our auto industry left for other places over the years. And I think we're going to get it more than all back. They're coming in from Mexico, from Canada, from Germany. They're coming in from Japan. We made a deal with Japan. $650 billion. We never got anything. We made a deal with the European Union, $950 billion and have to buy our oil and gas and many other things. And I want to say it's good for everybody, all that. We made a deal recently with China where they buy our soybeans. But it's hundreds of billions of dollars and it's incredible what's taken place in our country. The world was laughing at us like we were stupid people. They're not laughing anymore. They don't laugh at us anymore. They respect us now again, and that's what we want.
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B
We.
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We want to be liked. We want to be respected, much more so than being liked. And, you know, in a certain way, they like us better now, too. They respect us, but they like us better now because the world was ripping off our country. Not sustainable. Not even sustainable. China was making $722 billion. Think of that. Not million. 722 million is a lot, isn't it? $722 billion. They built their military with the money that we gave them over the years. And in my first term, we had a great first term. The most successful economy we've ever had in my first term. This is going to blow it away. This is blowing it away. To be honest with you, it blows everything away. There's never been a time like this. And you're going to see the results, you know, pretty, pretty quickly. But in stark contrast to the previous administration, 100% of all new jobs created in America under my administration have been created in the private sector because, you know, we are trimming out government jobs. You can't have. You know, what they do is they give you phony job numbers in a lot of ways, but they'd hire 100,000 people, and all of a sudden it looks like they're doing well. They're not doing well because those are jobs that are. They hurt our country. If those jobs can be in the private sector, paying taxes and all the other things, it's a big hundred percent of the jobs that we put in have been thinking that are in the private come from the private sector. In my first term, we built the greatest economy in the history of the world. And now we're doing it again. But this time it really is, as I said, much stronger, much better. I think it's going to be something that nobody has ever seen before. My pledge to every family and every small Business is that I will not rest until you are richer, stronger, more successful, happier, till you've gotten a piece of the American dream. Some of you in this room have really gotten a piece of it because you made a great decision to go with a great, great company years ago. And it's really pretty amazing. That begins with making America. We have to do. The word is affordable. And affordable should be our word, not theirs. Because the Democrats got up and took affordability. And they don't say that they had the worst inflation in history, the highest energy prices in history. Everything was the worst. What they're great at is lying. They say affordability. This stuff was all much more expensive. We have a couple of items like coffee, which is a little high. We're going to get that down. You saw that today. The coffee comes down. Remember when I first took over eggs? My third day in office, I have a news conference, and the fake news media was screaming at me, Mr. Congressman, about eggs. You remember that? I'm standing there very innocent. Oh, hello. Do you have any questions? What about eggs? What about them? They're up four times. I said, look, I just got here. I'm sorry. And Brooke Rollins and Department of Agriculture did a phenomenal job. And over. They said, don't order eggs for Easter because you won't be able to get them. And they said, we have a big Easter egg hunt at the White House. It's sort of a thing that has gone on for a hundred years. They said, could you order plastic eggs? I said, I'm not ordering plastic eggs. We're going to have eggs down by that time. And by the time we got to Easter, the price of eggs had fallen precipitously. We had all the eggs in this country you want. And we know what we're doing. I mean, we know what we're doing. We rebuilt our military. We have the greatest military anywhere in the world. We make the greatest military equipment anywhere. And everybody knows it. And everybody knows it. And you saw that with the way we took out the nuclear capability of Iran with those gorgeous B2 bombers. They flew in there and they wiped it. And the word was obliterated. Remember when CN Said, well, it might not have been obliteration. Think of the pilots. They go in there, they're under fire. They. I was watching this from the Situation Room, and you get to see things in situations you wouldn't believe. They said, sir, they have entered Iran airspace. All of a sudden, you see much faster than you see them going down at the. The whole thing was crazy. I actually Said, do people really want to do that for a living? They're waiting for them, but the equipment is so good. The B2 bomber stealth, they never saw them. They never saw them. I mean, it's the most amazing thing. And I honored the pilots at the White House. I had them brought in, along with mechanics and a lot of other people. We brought them to the White House to give a little celebration because they flew 37 hours flawlessly. Now, compare that to the Jimmy Carter Iran situation with the helicopters crashing and the this and oh, what a horror. And the hostages. And I said, we can't let that happen. But we have a great team. General Raisin Cain is unbelievable. The whole group is unbelievable. And they went in and I brought them into the White House, and I brought them then into the Oval Office, the pilots. And we met them all handsome. They look like Tom Cruise. They really do. I don't want to be a wise guy and say, but taller. I'm not going to say that. No, they're perfect specimens. I mean, these guys are like, for a movie, I could take everyone, put them in a movie. And I said to him, so what's the story with that raid? Did you expect? Because you remember, I pulled it back because I saw reporting that we're going to be leaving at a certain time. And I said to the general, is that not good that they think that? And they sort of got it right. They saw a lot of activity, actually. You know why? They saw one of the things. They saw a lot of unbelievable activity going on at the McDonald's next to the base where they take off. The McDonald's was doing five, right? Five times. They were going crazy. So they say, there's something going on over there. The biggest activity that McDonald's had ever had. And it was a nice story how well it's doing, but that was not a good story for us. So I canceled it and then replaced. I announced, we're canceling it. And the pilots said they were devastated. Then I put it back at the exact same time because that was the only time they weren't thinking would happen. And we left exactly in time. But that was after canceling it two days before. And then we put it right back in the exact same slot. And we had identical planes, B2s, flying four, four of them flying into Guam. And they thought that was the attack team. And they were watching those planes in Guam going to Guam. And that was not the planes that we had. But think of it, they flew both ways. 37 hours without a sputtering of a bad engine without any problem. But they got in and they said, they have entered Iran airspace and the enemy's waiting for them. And they drop the bombs. They hit every chute. You know, they have air chutes that go deep into the granite mountains. If you don't hit those chutes, the damage won't be as big as you want. And every bomb hit every chute. And then we hit him with rockets from a submarine that was quite a distance away, 30 of them, let's put it this way. They got hit, and it totally took out the nuclear capability. And I said to these guys, when they came in to the office, I said, do you guys like doing this stuff? You know, they said, sir, it was the greatest day of our life. Can you believe this, Congressman? It was the great. I mean, like, heroes. They're like American heroes. Who the hell wants to sit? You know, those ships are very big, but they're very small when you're up way high, going very fast. And he said, it was the greatest day of our life. And they told me something. Something that I didn't know. They said that, sir, do you know, we waited 22 years for this. Our predecessors and us, we would practice this run for 22 years. I didn't know that for 22 years we had a practice. We do it three times a year. We would practice this exact run. And then when you cancel it, because I canceled, when they heard that we were coming, we were devastated. I see. I said, see, now, if I were a flyer and they cancel, I'd be extremely happy. Well, we're canceled, so let's forget it. But we were devastated. So I said, this is something you really love, right? Yes, sir. We were so honored. This was the greatest day of our life. I mean, it's really great. We just have incredible people in this country. It's an amazing story. And they hit, and then they said, skedaddle. The word skedaddle. And that plane went like this. You know, when it drops a bomb, it goes down very steeply because that gives it a better angle and, you know, more speed for the bomb. Very, very heavy bombs, and they go boom. And as soon as those things, the one pilot, the first one said, skedaddle, and that thing just turned in its side and it. I mean, it's so unbelievable. And that knocked out Iran nuclear capability. And all of the Middle east became a different place. And now we have peace in the Middle East. And at the United nations today, they approved the Board of Peace, which is. I'm going to chair and we're picking their leaders or the heads of the most important nations in the world. I think it'll be a board like no other, other than perhaps the McDonald's board. You have a very good board. You actually have a very good board, but nobody thought a thing like that was. This just happened today, the Board of Peace. And it's going to be comprised of myself and leaders of other very important nations and very respected nations. And it's going to be something I think is going to be very important. It was just approved. It was. It was just endorsed by the United Nations. It was pretty great. It's a big thing. I think it's one of the most important things the United nations will ever do, actually. But Joe Biden's prices and his hikes cost a typical American family an estimated $33,000 and hit your workers and your customers and your small businesses very, very hard. The Biden administration started the affordability crisis. And my administration is ending it. I'm ending it. Prices are way down. If you just look. So we don't have, as I said, the inflation, but our energy prices are way down. And, you know, despite hamburgers being a big business, energy is one business that's bigger. When you get energy down, everything else is affected. If you start bringing the price again, that's like a massive tax cut. And they were selling, you know, they were having gasoline at 4,75 a gallon and 450, 350, 375. We're very much. We're going to be able. Looks like we're going to be able to hit $2 a gallon in the not too distant future. But let's say we're 250, 270, other than places like California, that's not fair because they put so high a tax on that you're really paying a lot of that price is the tax that you're paying to government, which is horrible, actually, what they do. But the price of gasoline and the price of energy is way down. So when energy comes down, you make the donuts, you make the chicken, you make whatever you're making. Everything is all about energy. You have to deliver it. You have the trucks, you have the fuel. When energy comes down, and it's come down fast. You know, we had an expression, drill, baby drill. And I drilled, baby drilled. I tell you, we drill. And last month it was announced we produced more oil and gas than any time in the history of our country by far. And when you do that, everything comes down. You don't even have to look at the numbers. And it's all beautifully coming down. And as per your chief executive and your chairman and everybody else, they tell me prices at McDonald's are coming down. It's moving. It's moving down. Unfortunately, they were so high in the last administration that people aren't that happy because it was so high. So even though it's coming down and coming down a lot, they want to see where it was like when I was president. And we'll be getting it very close to that number, maybe even better, depending on what we do with energy. But the energy is coming way down. In the nine months since I took office, we've stopped inflation in the tracks. Since January, the core inflation has been the lowest in just about eight years. Just changed. It was four years. Now it's eight years. It just changed about. They just said, sir, if you want, we can rewrite the speech. I said, no, I can remember it very nicely, thank you. I'm not Biden. In the past six months, the price of breakfast items has fallen 14%. Bread prices are down. Dairy prices are down. The price of eggs has declined 86% since March and much more than that since when I took over, because when I took over, it was an egg crisis, as we said. And I want to give a very Special thanks to McDonald's for slashing prices for your most popular items, bringing back extra value meals and. And I hear you're recommitting to the affordable options of Americans that we really know and love, all of the items that we love. And I hear that McDonald's is playing a very big role in that. We're getting prices down for this country. And there's no better leader or advocate than McDonald's. And I believe the next time I'll have to be. Maybe I'll have to be back here again next year. If you get them down enough, okay, that's all you have to do for me is get him down enough. We'll come back. We'll come back, Mr. Chairman. But while Democrats wanted to give Americans the largest tax hike in history in July, I proudly gave you the largest tax cuts in American history and signed the one big beautiful bill, I call it the great big beautiful bill into law that includes no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors. That is a big deal. So the great big beautiful bill is the biggest piece of legislation ever passed in our country's history. It gives expensing to you as owners where you do something you could expense it you can take it off in one year instead of 38 or 40 years. It gives you so many things. And I'm not giving it to you, I'm giving it to the people that you're hiring because I'm giving it for jobs. You're going to expand, you're going to do tremendously. You spend money and you can write it off quickly as opposed to over a period of many, many years. The typical waiter, waitress or police officer will take home roughly $2,000 extra each year because of just what we've done on taxes. And the taxes cut bill, and I call it the tax cut bill, is also a big boost to small businesses like yours. It includes permanent expensing. And again, the biggest thing I did in my first tax cut bill and this also expanded and extended, that was the expensing, the 100% expensing. But now we have the expensing for a 10 year period. So for 10 years. And frankly I sort of said, let's make it two years because, you know, I want the results to be immediate. Ten years, they can take their time. I had a lot of pushback, including from these guys. They said, no, the right thing. It might have been good for us politically, but it would have been, it's better what we did ultimately for the country. So we have 10 year full expensing. Nobody thought that was possible to get. We also expanded tax relief for all franchisees and made the pass through deduction permanent. It's now permanent. And very importantly, under our tax cut bill, we virtually eliminated the unfair estate tax or death tax so you can keep your family business in the family. Your children, if you love your children, if you leave your beautiful place to your children, you won't have estate tax, small business. Now if you don't love your children, don't. You don't really care what I'm saying right now. I've only had two or three people over the years. I say I take a vote. Does anybody in this room dislike their children? When you're not leaving it to your children and you know, it's always blank, blank, blank. Then all of a sudden one guy about six rows back, okay. And I thought he was kidding. I said, oh, that's so funny. I'm not kidding. My kid is no good, I'm not. I said, this is amazing. So he's not so happy with this, but it's all right. But think of it, you know, farmers especially, where they'd have a farm and you know the expression the land rich, cash poor, a little Bit. But they have a great, wonderful thing and a way of life that they wouldn't change with anybody, not even a franchisee, Right? They don't want a friend, they don't want a McDonald's if they have a farm. They love their farm just like you love what you're doing. But the farmers were dying, leaving their farm to their children. The value of the farm was high. They'd go out, they'd have a tremendous estate tax or death tax, and it would so much, I mean, the percentage is crazy. How high. They'd end up losing the farm in bankruptcy. They'd go out and borrow all this money to pay the tax, the estate tax. They'd put a mortgage on the farm and they'd end up losing the farm. Many of, many of them committed suicide. They would commit suicide. It was such a horrible thing that was happening. And we've ended. Think of that. The death tax, the estate tax on the small businesses. So I hope you, I hope you're around for a long time. You don't have to think about it, but it's a great thing for your family and it's, you know, a great thing for longevity. You know, you treat your franchise just like a farmer treats his farm. You love it. I know you're there early, you're cleaning it. Little touch of paint here. There we got, there's a little spot on the ceiling. Drives you crazy, right? It's, you know, it's love. It's love for what you do. It's amazing the job you do too. I see it, I go, I've been in plenty of McDonald's. They're clean beautifully. You must have some awfully good incentives because they are really amazing places, the job that's done. But upon taking office, I signed an order requiring that for every new regulation, 10 old job killing regulations have to be eliminated. So if they, if we put in a new regulation, then we get rid of 10. Otherwise you don't get the new regulation. And, you know, we got rid of the drip, drip water. We call it the drip drip, where drip drips out of the sink states with tremendous water. So much water, they have nothing but problems getting rid. They had restrictions on water. It comes down from heaven, right? They had restrictions on water. So you want to wash your hands or like me, I want to wash my hair. I lather up and I turn that and I. There's no water. The water's your drip. They call it. They put a restrictor on. I won't mention the third item in the bathroom. Because I always get criticized. I used to mention that, but I don't mention it anymore. Because you know what? I'm. I think you do. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you shouldn't be owning a McDonald's franchise. You wouldn't do well even with a McDonald's sandwich franchise. But no, the water restrictions totally lifted. All restrictors are gone. And, you know, it's interesting. Your dishwashers were covered, right? You had no water. I was with some of the people that make them Whirlpool and others, and they said, sir, they won't give us the water to use in our dishwashers or use in our washing machines. The washing machines have no water. I mean, it's like a glass of water, half a glass of water. We need water. And I said, how bad is it? He said, well, like the dishwasher, they put the dishes in, and they just keep pressing the button, bing, bing, bing. They end up using more water. So I gave them, as you know, unlimited water. Biden came back with a rigged election, and he immediately restricted the water again. But I came back in immediately, unrestricted again. So now you have unlimited water to clean your damn dishes. Okay. And other things. Your hands didn't you hate that? You walk in to wash your hands? I'm a big hands guy. I like to wash my hands. You know, I used to hate shaking hands. Now if you. Once you run for office, you better like shaking hands. So you got a problem? You ever see a politician? No, I don't want to shake hands. Can you do that? I don't think you wouldn't be a politician very long. I actually thought that with COVID that would be the end. Because. Because, you know, they didn't want you to shake. I said, well, but then it came back a little bit slow then eventually. But when you're a politician, you have to shake hands. I like washing my hands. And you go into sink new places generally, and you turn on the water and there's literally no water. And how about the places that think they're going to save a fortune so they spend a lot of money where the water turns off. You press the thing, which you hate to do, you know, your hands, you don't like to press. So you get the towel, you press it, you wash it, and the water stops. So they have both a restrictor and a supper. You get like four drops of water. Tell me, do we really get rich with that? Okay. Do we really? This is so ridiculous. So I undid all of that nonsense. But we did much more important for you. We've rescinded the insane Biden energy regulations on ovens, cooktops, microwaves, and ice makers that were driving your cost through the roof. You have no longer restrictions in that, I hope you understand. But I did better than that, too. In terms of slashing. We slashed more than $1 trillion worth of regulations burdens on the US economy, in particular on businesses and people that employ people. Combining our regulatory and tax cuts, we've reduced the effective burden on franchisees by more than 37%. You're so freaking lucky. You are so lucky. You know, these guys are so loaded, they probably don't even know what I did for them. They make so much money, they say, yeah, that's peanuts. 37%. Let me tell you, should have suffered a little while through Kamala. The good news is she had no clue. You just wonder. I want to give an IQ test to Kamala and Biden. Who do you think wins? But they were destroying your businesses. But I have better than that, though. As you know, in my first time, I also stopped a mortal threat to the franchise business model by terminating Obama's infamous joint employer rule. Joint employer. In other words, you were screwed. You were. You. You would have been mortally wounded, perhaps. I said to a couple of the people, what would have happened if that. Sir, please, I'd rather not talk about. They don't want to talk about. I ended it. You got lucky on that one, let me tell you. Because I said, really? I asked one of my guys, because when I was coming over, I saw that in the speech. I said, what does that mean? He said, that would have been death to businesses like yours and others. It was just, these people don't care. They didn't care. But I ended it. And I think that's one of the biggest things that you'll ever have done for yourselves. That's. I think that's the biggest thing that will ever can ever be done for you. We mentioned all these different items, but that's the biggest by far for you. As long as I'm president, I'll always defend your right to run your own small business and do it well. And some of your small businesses have become very large business. One of the franchise owners here today is Carlos Matios Sr. Who escaped Communist Cuba when he was just six years old. In America, Carlos took jobs as newspaper delivery boy, a factory worker, and eventually became a New Jersey police officer. Then in 1998, Carlos switched careers and moved to Virginia, where he took over his first McDonald's Where's Carlos? Is he around here? Let me. Come on, stand up, stand up. And your son, Stand up. Your son. Good looking, good looking son. I met him backstage. He found he had a knack for turning around poorly performing restaurants. And today his family owns nearly 60 McDonald's all along the east coast, including at the Pentagon where I've ordered numerous Big Macs. Right. In fact, he served when the great football team came in. They served, they served McDonald's. And you'd have these guys walking out, the biggest human beings I've ever seen. They were the national champs, Right? Remember the team? Who is the team? Remember the team? D. S? Clemson. That's right. And these guys, I don't know, that were, you know, like six. Six. What do you weigh, sir? Weigh? 392. I said, but you, you reported it. Much less. Yeah, that's what they say, but. And he'd have like, like 12. Just each. And I thought he was bringing them back to the rest of the team. I said, that's nice, but maybe the team wants them. No, no, this is what I, I said. Are you going to eat all of them? Yes, sir. He didn't even know what I was talking about. But you served it and you did a great job in 2019 when we hosted that great Clemson Tigers at the White House. I literally brought dozens of quarter pounders from McDonald's. We bought a whole thing. We bought the quarter pound. We bought. Actually just about. Well, he really had no choice because he just took everything he had in the whole restaurant. We got whatever the hell, probably whatever didn't sell, we got. Right. But Carlos is here with Carlos Jr. S son, who started as a cashier and now runs dozens of the restaurants. Congratulations, fellows. What a great family. Congratulations. So in conclusion here tonight, carry on and really just keep going and inspiring that legacy and that pride that you have at really beyond almost all else. It was excellence in service stretching back more than seven decades. Two and two hard working brothers with a hamburger stand in California.
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This is an iHeart podcast.