Is This The End Of The Democrat Party?

Summary

Ruthless Podcast Episode Summary: "Is This The End Of The Democrat Party?"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Ruthless Podcast
• Hosts: Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, and John Ashbrook
• Episode: Is This The End Of The Democrat Party?
• Release Date: March 6, 2025

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of the Ruthless Podcast, hosts Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, and John Ashbrook delve into a critical analysis of the current state of American politics, posing the provocative question: Is This The End Of The Democrat Party? Released shortly after a pivotal State of the Union address by President Trump, the discussion examines the rapid policy advancements under Trump and the seeming paralysis within the Democratic Party.

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Trump’s Policy Momentum

The conversation kicks off with an appreciation of President Trump's swift policy implementations, which the hosts argue are fulfilling the conservative agenda with unprecedented speed. Josh Holmes notes:

Josh Holmes [00:00]: "This momentum of, like, wow, Trump just keeps knocking out so much stuff so fast. It's like, you know, your entire wish list of what you want from an entire president's term is, like, happening in three weeks, and it keeps going."

The hosts praise the efficiency and effectiveness of Trump's administration, suggesting that such rapid action contrasts sharply with Democratic inaction.

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Democrat Party Analysis

Michael Duncan leads a scathing critique of the Democratic Party, describing it as a "rudderless ship" struggling with internal fractures and a departure from centrist values. He asserts:

Michael Duncan [00:23]: "What it said about the Democratic Party is far more significant in both the short and the long term of American politics. These guys have a rudderless ship."

John Ashbrook adds to this narrative, emphasizing the detrimental impact of Democratic policies on programs like Medicaid:

John Ashbrook [00:42]: "He's right. He did beat Medicaid. Beat it to death."

The hosts highlight specific Democratic actions, such as the Biden administration's handling of Medicare, accusing them of "raiding" the program and increasing costs for seniors.

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State of the Union Speech Review

The core of the episode revolves around the recent State of the Union address. Michael Duncan lauds the speech, labeling it as a unifying and strategic success for the Republican side. He remarks:

Michael Duncan [05:07]: "The Golden Age, that's something that is now entirely synthesized with the Trump administration."

Comfortably Smug provides a detailed analysis of President Trump's delivery, praising his ability to maintain control and effectively counter Democratic disruptions:

Comfortably Smug [02:37]: "He looked right at him. [...] He pointed at them, and it was just masterful."

The hosts commend Trump’s ability to highlight bipartisan issues and expose Democratic weaknesses, particularly their lack of decorum and inability to show basic humanity during the speech.

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Media Reaction

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the contrasting reactions from mainstream media versus public opinion. The hosts criticize outlets like the Washington Post and New York Times for their unfavorable coverage despite high public approval of Trump's address. Michael Duncan points out:

Michael Duncan [33:56]: "Noted conservative outlet CBS News finds that 76% of the American people approve of that speech."

They argue that media bias undermines the Republican message, reinforcing the notion that Democrats are out of touch and incapable of leading effectively.

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Senator Tommy Tuberville’s Insights

A notable segment features Senator Tommy Tuberville, who shares his perspectives on various policy issues and the Democratic Party's shortcomings. He discusses the administration's achievements, such as reducing illegal border crossings, and criticizes Democrats for obstructing progressive legislation:

Tommy Tuberville [52:37]: "They have zero leadership over there. They have no game plan. All they want to do is try to trick people into thinking that they're for them."

Tuberville also addresses challenges in college athletics, particularly the impact of NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) regulations and transfer portals, expressing frustration over the NCAA’s inability to manage these changes effectively.

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Listener Comments and Feedback

The hosts engage with listener feedback, showcasing support for Trump’s policies and highlighting public approval. Comments emphasize the perceived transformation under Trump’s leadership, with one listener from Orange County, California, stating:

Nancy [43:03]: "Trump's greatest overall accomplishment has been psychological. [...] For the first time, we are seeing real change and at breathtaking speed."

Another listener praises the administration's handling of international hostage releases, contrasting it with Democratic shortcomings:

Suzanne Farrell [43:59]: "Hostages he's gotten released, not just the ones in the Middle East, but the men from Russia and the six Rick Grenell got released from Venezuela."

These testimonials reinforce the podcast's narrative of Republican resurgence and Democratic decline.

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Conclusion

The Ruthless Podcast wraps up with a firm stance on the potential demise of the Democratic Party. The hosts argue that the party's internal disarray and inability to connect with the electorate signal a significant shift in American politics. They express optimism about the Republican Party's unified direction under Trump and advocate for continued engagement and support from listeners.

Josh Holmes [78:55]: "Absolute banger of an episode. Gentlemen, thank you so much, Senator Tuberville, and thank you so much to our dear listeners. [...] Until next time, minions, keep the faith, hold the line, and own the libs. We'll see you Tuesday. Stay ruthless."

The episode serves as both a critique of current Democratic strategies and a rallying cry for conservative listeners to remain steadfast in their support for Republican leadership.

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Notable Quotes

• Josh Holmes [00:00]: "This momentum of, like, wow, Trump just keeps knocking out so much stuff so fast..."
• Michael Duncan [00:23]: "What it said about the Democratic Party is far more significant in both the short and the long term of American politics..."
• John Ashbrook [00:42]: "He's right. He did beat Medicaid. Beat it to death."
• Michael Duncan [05:07]: "The Golden Age, that's something that is now entirely synthesized with the Trump administration."
• Senator Tommy Tuberville [52:37]: "They have zero leadership over there. They have no game plan... They're Marxists. They're not Americans."
• Comfortably Smug [02:37]: "He looked right at him. [...] He pointed at them, and it was just masterful."

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and fervent arguments presented in the episode, providing listeners with a clear understanding of the hosts' perspectives on the potential decline of the Democratic Party and the rise of Republican leadership under President Trump.

Transcript

[Josh Holmes]

This momentum of, like, wow, Trump just keeps knocking out so much stuff so fast. It's like, you know, your entire wish list of what you want from an entire president's term is, like, happening in three weeks, and it keeps going. And then on the other side of the coin, it's like, okay, so what's the other side doing? And it really might be just, like, permanently foreclosing. Like, they really. It could be a wrap on the.

[Michael Duncan]

Democrat Party, but what it said about the Democratic Party is far more significant in the both the short and the long term of American politics. These guys have a rudderless ship. We finally beat Medicare.

[John Ashbrook]

He's right. He did beat Medicaid. Beat it to death.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Joe Biden's legacy for seniors.

[Michael Duncan]

He raided Medicare, made premiums skyrocket, and.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Drove up drug costs.

[Michael Duncan]

Worse, the Biden pill penalty is already.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Slashing the development of affordable drugs, forcing.

[Michael Duncan]

Seniors to pay the price of Biden's failed policy.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Biden broke Medicare, but President Trump can fix it. Call Congress and urge them to end.

[Michael Duncan]

The Biden pill penalty.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please.

[Josh Holmes]

Just a catching strays over here.

[Michael Duncan]

You're in for a hell of a show.

[Josh Holmes]

Keep the faith, hold the line, and own the libs.

[Comfortably Smug]

It's time for our main event.

[Michael Duncan]

Good Thursday to you. I think the question is, is this the end of the Democrat Party? It is a question we have not grappled with since Ronald Reagan took 49 states back in 1984, but is a question that feels very pertinent this week with the events of the State of the Union and everything thereafter. Fellas, Josh Holmes, comfortably smug, John Ashbrook, Michael Duncan on assignment today. But, boys, we got a lot to say.

[Josh Holmes]

That is actually a serious question you have to ask after seeing that. So, I mean, you know, we'd had such a long discussion for a bunch of episodes about how this momentum of, like, wow, Trump just keeps knocking out so much stuff so fast. It's like your entire wish list of what you want from an entire president's term is, like, happening in three weeks. And it keeps going. And then on the other side of the coin, it's like, okay, so what's the other side doing? And it really might be just, like, permanently foreclosing. Like, they really. It could be a wrap on the Democrat Party.

[Comfortably Smug]

The end of the Democrat Party and the dawn of the golden age of our country. It's not a coincidence.

[Michael Duncan]

Very well said. No question about it. The voice encapsulating it, as always. We got a very big show. We've got Senator Tommy Tuberville coaches in the program today and we're gonna be recapping the events of the week. Obviously the State of the Union, the reaction of the State of the Union, and then some takeaways like, look, we've done this for a living and we've done it in some places where you can see telltale signs of what Democrats are going through that the media wants to cover up. They don't wanna tell you the story of the big fractures and the big problems that are happening and their further cleavage away from the center of this country, which of course signals the end of a nationally popular political party. Now, not saying it's done today, but there are signs. Yeah, yeah, there are signs that it's not going well. So we're going to get to all of that. Chevron's latest deep water development, Anchor is powered by innovation. This breakthrough technology helps enable us to safely produce oil and natural gas at greater pressures, setting a new industry benchmark. Anchor is pivotal in our goal to produce 300,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2026 in the Gulf of America, home to some of our lowest carbon intensity producing assets. That's energy in progress. Visit chevron.com anchor to learn more. Let's jump right into, right off the top with the state of the Union. Let's play clip one, if you don't mind spaghetti.

[John Ashbrook]

And to my fellow citizens, America is back. Six weeks ago, I stood beneath the dome of this capitol and proclaimed the dawn of the Golden Age of America. From that moment on, it has been nothing but swift and unrelenting action to usher in the greatest and most successful era in the history of our country. We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four years or eight years. And we are just getting started.

[Michael Duncan]

So, I mean, look, a couple of takeaways. One, the Golden Age, that's something that is now entirely synthesized with the Trump administration. The message of what they're trying to accomplish here in these four years. And you have remarkable unity on the Republican side. I mean, that, that you could hear just in the reaction of how excited people are about it. That says something. We've seen a lot of these things over the years. When you have people jumping to their seats and ready to go right off the jump, you know, it says something on the other side.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yep.

[Michael Duncan]

You know, he's talking about how great the country's gonna be and everybody's like dead panning it.

[Comfortably Smug]

Right, right. And then you get, you get Al Green out of the gate with his cane Shaking it at Trump, acting like a complete lunatic. And I've talked to people who were inside the room that night, sitting there, listening to the president, and they said the Democrats were so disruptive out of the gate, it was actually kind of hard to hear what Trump was saying in that room. And as you pointed out, it's a very small room. I mean, people are much closer together in there than we are sitting here at this desk. And so imagine a scenario where it's hard to hear Trump, and then also think about the discipline and the force that it takes to be President Trump and just continue to deliver. He must have really been enjoying himself last night.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, no question. And you've seen over the last couple of weeks, you know, Zelensky in the. In the Oval, and then you saw the governor of Maine. I mean, anytime there's an audience where President Trump is controlling the pace of play and somebody tries to come at him, it doesn't end well.

[Comfortably Smug]

Right.

[Michael Duncan]

And it didn't end well for Democrats at all. Look, I want to take you under the hood, because some of the things that we have done over the years can give you some indication of what Democrats are going through here. I remember Johnny and I were in leadership communications positions during probably the leanest era of my lifetime in Republican politics, where you had, what, 40 seats in the Senate, huge minorities in the House.

[Comfortably Smug]

Right after Obama won, and the president.

[Michael Duncan]

With a 75% approval rating. And there was a real question of how to handle that. And you had a Republican Party that immediately looked at the agenda list of what President Obama wanted to do, and it was like an allergy. And they knew immediately we were in deep trouble. And everybody was very, very angry. Angry at losses. What they saw as incompetence on the campaign front. I mean, there's a reason that this was a new leadership team that we were working for. I mean, there was a whole bunch of things that people were really mad about. And the whole goal was to ensure that the party knew how to not self destruct, because at some point, you were gonna get an opportunity to talk about something because you knew that they would overreach. With numbers like that and the enthusiasm that Democrats had at that time, they were gonna overreach, but you had to make sure that you didn't self destruct beforehand, so that by the time they got there, you'd already blown yourself up, you'd wasted all your political capital. Nobody took you seriously. You had just sort of done all of the things that everybody who expects a party that's no Longer nationally competitive to do. And so we would have conference meetings with the entire. All the membership of the conference, sit down and talk about how to act during that speech, that particular speech. And there were a couple of rules. One is, you applaud the President of the United States. Anytime they talk about how America is great, you applaud. It doesn't matter. It's the President of the United States. It's not the President of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. It's the President of the United States. When they have sympathetic voices of issues that you can all agree on are issues, but you have very different ways of going about trying to solve them, you applaud those people. These are victims of circumstance that you may have a different way of approaching the problem, but the person themselves is an American. These are the people who put you in office. You stand up and you applaud and you make sure that everybody knows.

[Josh Holmes]

You.

[Michael Duncan]

Never have indifference to the plight that Americans are feeling, whether or not they're invited there by the President of the United States or not. Right? And then you just try to be respectful. And I think, you know, we had a whole bunch of meetings on that. And for the most part, there was one issue at one of these things that we did where Joe Wilson, now it sounds so quaint. A representative from South Carolina said, you lie.

[Josh Holmes]

Which ruled.

[Comfortably Smug]

Which ruled.

[Josh Holmes]

I loved it.

[Michael Duncan]

But hilariously, like small ball, the American media went absolutely nuts about it and tried to make him like this, just pariah as a result. But I would, you know, there was what, 300, 200 something other members that didn't. They just did exactly what they needed to do because they knew along the line, at some point we were going to get to something turned out to be Obamacare. And when we got to Obamacare, the powder was dry. They didn't see the Republican Party as a party that was just sort of this feckless, uncaring, unserious party. It was somebody who's making real arguments against a government takeover of health care and throwing people off their plans. And the chaos that all of that created. And that sort of began the Republican Revolution of 2010 that ultimately ended in 2014 with massive Republican majorities in the House and the Senate. That's how we went about doing that. Now, I have no doubt that Akeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have somewhere in their head, let's not embarrass ourselves tonight. But you have to wonder about whether they have any grip on their conference whatsoever. The first thing they did is put A video together that had the same script where like 25 different members said the same script in a video that had all the authenticity of a pickpocket.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Right.

[Comfortably Smug]

But they said the word shit out of the gate. So that means it's authentic.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

So that's.

[Comfortably Smug]

That means they're representing what people think.

[Josh Holmes]

So I have this kind of like synthesizing as I was listening to Holmes. I hope everyone listened to that very carefully because there was so much wisdom in that. And you can see a reflection and almost a contrast between what he just described of where Republicans were at. When we were told that Republicans are in the wilderness, you know, a regional party after Obama's 08 victory, the wisdom in what he just described of the approach that Republicans took as opposed to what you're seeing right now from the Democrats. And a couple things. First, you'd mentioned that Republicans were told, rightfully so, that if you hear something's good for America, you may have a different approach to tackle an issue or the circumstances that this individual faces. You cheer for it, which is the right thing to do. We didn't see that from the Democrats, not once. And there's a very specific reason why. Because their party has been so captured by a very far left radical fringe, so captured by it that they have painted themselves into a corner they can't get out of. When inherently they are told, they tell. The left tells Americans that America is like a fallen country. It's an inherently racist, irredeemable country. They can't just cheer for America because they've been taught and have been teaching that inherently America is a bad thing to begin with.

[Michael Duncan]

That's right. Right.

[Josh Holmes]

Which is why you saw they were unable to do that. Secondly, when you describe this video that they put out ahead of time of them all being like, oh, they said shit, so it's going to be authentic. And they're all like robots reading the same line, completely inauthentic. The problem is Democrats see their problem as a communications problem, as they always do, when it's inherently an ideological problem. When you see over 75% of Americans agreeing on all these issues, like they could not cheer for men being removed from women's sports, which is an 80, 20 issue. You see the polling out there. It's the most popular action that Trump has taken in his presidency. It polls the best.

[Michael Duncan]

And not a single Democrat, it's even worse. They had a young girl who suffered brain damage as a result of an injury from a man playing women's sports. And they couldn't Cheer for her.

[Josh Holmes]

They couldn't cheer for her.

[Michael Duncan]

They couldn't cheer for her. Her existence in the chamber was something that they couldn't cheer for. That's what I'm talking about.

[Josh Holmes]

And then again. And they're wearing pink, though, because they see it as a calm strategy of we support women. Our comm strategy is to wear pink, not cheer or support this legislation that actually protects and helps women.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, you're so true.

[Comfortably Smug]

But then you look to their leadership and, you know, I heard Hakeem Jeffries ahead of time, basically trying to tell people, you have to act cool, you have to do your thing. And I thought, okay, well, here's one guy who maybe knows how to read and understands history, but he is leading a group of people who all think they're the main character. And so it wasn't just people in pink. There were people in black, There were people wearing other things. Everybody's doing their own deal sign, had.

[Michael Duncan]

Bingo signs like a auction paddles.

[Comfortably Smug]

Everybody's got, you got aoc, you've got Ilhan Omar. All of them think that they're the main character and that their storyline is the only plot that matters for America. And they couldn't be more wrong. They're so out of touch. And it was on full display last night. I'm so glad it was exposed and I'm so glad that the President didn't just stop and, like, not address it.

[Josh Holmes]

Yep.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Comfortably Smug]

And he did it in a very smooth way. Like whenever he got to a point in his speech that it really applied to them, he turned right to them, looked right at them and he pointed at them, and it was just masterful. The guy is a showman early on.

[Josh Holmes]

Just the last thing for him to be like, I could. I could give something that every American agrees with and these Democrats still won't cheer it. Kind of calling out early what we were going to see and the Dems how they were going to behave for the entire night. That was a smart play.

[Michael Duncan]

Totally. So if we're gonna put a fine point on the top segment of this, it is the President did a great job. It was a great speech. It was a well written speech. The guests were fabulous. He delivered it perfectly. It was funny. We're gonna get into all of that. But what it said about the Democratic Party is far more significant in both the short and the long term of American politics. These guys have a rudderless ship. To the extent that Hakeem Jeffries understood what the assignment was, he could not get his party to do it right to the extent that Chuck Schumer understands how politics under the Dome works, he could not get his party to do it. And what that tells you is, you know, Wolf, our producer, brought up, it's like watching a college campus protest where everybody sort of shows up because they're, like, part of the left. And somebody starts screaming about the environment and that shut down the Keystone pipeline. And then somebody else is like, yeah, we don't like the Jews either. And you're like. You're like, insanity. You're like. You're like, what? What? Where did that come from? But that's. That's so true. That's today's. That's today's Democratic Party. And then just in case you needed just a little bit extra to tip you away from the nonsense that they're selling, you get something like, clip one A Spaghett's. Throw it up there.

[John Ashbrook]

Just listen to some of the appalling waste we have already identified.

[Comfortably Smug]

I love this.

[John Ashbrook]

$22 billion from HHS to provide free housing and cars for illegal aliens. $45 million for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma. $40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants. Nobody knows what that is. $8 million to promote LGBTQI plus in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of.

[Comfortably Smug]

I could watch it a thousand times.

[Michael Duncan]

The comedic timing is fantastic.

[Josh Holmes]

Also, the power of that, because every single person in America watching it has the exact same thought. Whenever he says any of these, they get the absurdity of how their tax money has been just lit on fire. And then when he says to Lesotho, I myself, I was like, I don't know. Where the hell is this? And I'm pretty good at geography. He says, wherever the hell that is. And it's like every single person watching this, except for an angry leftist, is 100% on the page with them. And you see that in the polling afterwards.

[Comfortably Smug]

You know, it's funny, the DC Types on Twitter in real time during the speech being like, oh, I've been there. Oh, I know where that is. I know where that is.

[Josh Holmes]

I can't remember who did. Someone tweeted. They're like, right now, there's like a CNN producer running around trying to find a Lesotho restaurant, talk to the owner and be like, is Donald Trump attacking you?

[Michael Duncan]

So good in the contrast of, you got a Democratic Party that's outside of the restaurant and everything. All, you know, protesting, all this stuff makes no sense. Many amazing points during this speech. We're gonna get to a lot More that we find particularly interesting as we go forward, including the media reaction and everything we're gonna get to right after this. Hardworking Americans know when it's time to roll up our sleeves and get the job done.

[Comfortably Smug]

Now is the time to unleash our.

[Michael Duncan]

Nation'S energy, to create jobs, secure our future, and make life better, more affordable, and full of opportunity for all Americans.

[Comfortably Smug]

That's the power of America's oil and natural gas.

[Michael Duncan]

Learn [e-mail], paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. All right, so look, coming into the speech, you knew that a main piece of this for President Trump would be border security. Since he's come down the Golden Escalator, it has been his one issue. We live for four years of an administration telling us nothing they can do, right? Nothing they can do. It's a amorphous piece of legislation that they've negotiated that they can't get through, and so they can't do anything about it. Never mind the previous four years, he'd fixed the problem, and then the guy shows up six weeks before. And the day before this speech, they released numbers saying it's the lowest number of border crossings that we've had in this country in, like, 40 years. So it's like a capstone accomplishment. He's been on the job all six weeks. He's going to talk about all this stuff. Let's play Clip two.

[John Ashbrook]

Since taking office, my administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history. And we quickly achieved the lowest numbers of illegal border crosses ever recorded. Thank you.

[Josh Holmes]

Wow.

[John Ashbrook]

The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying we needed new legislation. We must have legislation to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.

[Josh Holmes]

So strong. That is so strong. Strong.

[Tommy Tuberville]

You gotta love it.

[Michael Duncan]

So strong.

[Comfortably Smug]

He looked right at him.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, he did. Yeah, he looked right at him.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, so that's the thing that Ashbrook and I were on, Waters, in the minutes leading into the speech, which is an awesome opportunity, sandwiched in between Kid Rock and Danica Patrick. Yeah, like, love that.

[Josh Holmes]

It's a hell of a lineup.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, I love that. Waters, you're the man for doing that. But one of the things we talked about was, if you've been in that chamber, what's so striking about it, the first time you go in during a State of the Union is how small it is on tv. It looks like it's a stadium. It kind of looks like a sports arena type thing where it's just Filled to the rafters and there's upper decks or whatever. When you go in there, everyone's so close. It's so tight. And so for him to deliver that as he's just eye staring, I mean, we're talking 10ft.

[Josh Holmes]

Yep.

[Michael Duncan]

To the people he's talking to. I mean, the, That's a big deal. Yeah, that's a big deal. And the, it also, I think, says a lot about the Democrats in their inability to keep decorum because it really, if you have, if you're in a place where you've got like, you know, a couple hundred people, it's like being in a movie theater and deciding you need to like, oh, don't go in there. You know, like sometimes you just have to have some manners when you're in public. And they had none. And there was a President of the United States addressing for the first time in his second term the United States Congress. They couldn't do it despite being 10ft away from him.

[Comfortably Smug]

You know, it's just, it's because they think that everything is about them and not them as a party, them as like a person. Like AOC is somehow the most important person in this world. And if we only paid more attention to her, America would be better like that. It's the kind of narcissistic lunacy that only the left can produce. And it was on full display, no question about it.

[Michael Duncan]

There was a bunch of other moments, one of them that I found completely hilarious for two reasons. And we'll get into right after we play the clip. Clip three, please.

[John Ashbrook]

With no end in sight, the United States has sent hundreds of billions of dollars to support Ukraine's defense. With no security, with no energy. Do you want to keep it going for another five? Yeah, yeah. You, you would say Pocahontas says yes.

[Michael Duncan]

So a couple things happened here. One, they, the, the Pocahontas thing's hilarious. It's obviously right. And then like, that's what you get with Trump. You're gonna, you're going to get a broadside if you come at him. As the governor of Maine found out, you know, as Zelensky found out, like you're going to get, if you want to try to embarrass him, it's not going to work.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Right.

[Michael Duncan]

But I thought the most impactful part of not just this, but many moments in that speech were what Democrats were doing to applaud. Right. He just laid out the framework. The framework of this was you've got a four year war where you've lost hundreds of thousands of people, we have supported the Ukrainians without any sort of end game whatsoever, none articulated, sending arms, having the American taxpayers on the hook with never an articulated strategy for security by the Biden administration whatsoever. And they're clapping, and they're clapping and they're clapping. And he says, you want it to go on another five years? And they keep clapping, and they keep clapping, and they keep clapping after the context has already been laid out, that this has been going on four years and hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, $300 billion have been spent. So it sounds like if you're in the chamber, Pocahontas, you're like, yeah, I'm just in opposition to his view of Ukraine. To your average American who's watching that the framework is not lost in them. The framework is somehow that lady thinks it's a good idea to continue funding a war forever that has killed hundreds of thousands of people with the American taxpayer on the hook for it, without any real strategy to end this thing. That's what they're clapping for. Make no mistake. Like, you can say all the insiders, all the reporters, all the people who do these things, it really is every single day where they're just like, oh, it's a disagreement with how he's. How he handled Zelensky on Friday, right? And they can say that that's not what the American people saw. That's not what they saw.

[Josh Holmes]

That moment completely encapsulated his argument, President Trump's argument, his approach to this foreign policy of he doesn't support a forever war with no end in sight, with endless loss of life, and then he has a foil in that moment who makes it apparent that the Democrat position is the exact opposite. They will literally clap an endless war with an endless cost of life and of treasure that they support that. How do you get your opponents to. How do you do it set up like this?

[Michael Duncan]

It's his greatest gift.

[Josh Holmes]

Unbelievable.

[Michael Duncan]

It's his greatest gift. It's time tested. Every single time he makes his political opponents absolutely ridiculous, they just. They can't. Look, it's a nuanced topic. There are things that are extremely complicated about Ukraine, right? At no point did he say, it's not worth trying to save Ukraine. At no point did he say, here's a winner and who's a loser, or, I'm taking one side. He just framed it up about here's what the issue. And there was one side who's more than happy, unclapped, like a fucking circus seal, right over an absolutely ridiculous proposition.

[Comfortably Smug]

Right.

[Michael Duncan]

There's no human alive that would clap for that.

[Josh Holmes]

Incredible how he gets.

[Comfortably Smug]

I mean, what we saw last night, obviously he was funny and he had these little masterstrokes just like that. And he was unique. This is leadership. His speech was declarative. He was very bold. And the whole thing. Holmes reminded me of something you always say about presidential campaigns. You cannot win a presidential campaign if you're running some other person's playbook. You cannot go down in history as one of the greatest leaders who's ever been on top of this country by running somebody else's playbook. Remember all of these Republican primaries in 08 and 12 and 16? The question is, who's the most like Reagan? And somebody, a governor from some state would raise his hand and be like, well, I'm the most like Reagan, because blah, blah, blah. And then the other person would say, no, no, I'm more like Reagan. This is new. This is leadership that's appropriate for this generation, that's needed for this time in American history. And he is exactly what we wanted. That's why people voted for it. This is. This is what. Excuse me. This is exactly what our country needs at this moment.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, what's so and so? Like taking the same framework where you get your opponents to either clap for the indefensible or sit on their hands for the universally praised.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

Is what he did in that moment. And that's why this is not. This isn't Tuesday night's news. This is going to carry on for a bit.

[Josh Holmes]

Yes.

[Michael Duncan]

And he put a finer point on that with some of the guests. This is the one that stuck out the most to us, obviously in clip four.

[John Ashbrook]

Since that time, DJ and his dad have been on a quest to make his dream come true. And DJ has been sworn in as an honorary law enforcement officer actually a number of times. Peace. The police love him. The police departments love him. And tonight, dj, we're going to do you the biggest honor of them all. I am asking our new Secret Service Director, Sean Curran, to officially make you an agent of the United States States Secret Service.

[Michael Duncan]

So, I mean, good God. First of all, this is a young man whose life has been threatened by cancer that has obviously had an untold impact on his family. And the only thing he ever wanted to be was a law enforcement officer. Something that a lot of people have got a lot of sympathy for, just aside from the fact that he's been stricken with his childhood malady. He just made his dream come true. Right. The kid's there. I mean, he's hugging a Secret Service agent. You have one side of the aisle that is erupting in applause because of the moment that that kid's having because President Trump made that moment happen for him. The other side is sitting there. They're not doing anything.

[Josh Holmes]

It's. It's an absence of. This isn't partisanship. It's an absence of humanity.

[Michael Duncan]

It is.

[Josh Holmes]

It's like, what's wrong? That's an actual defect as a person. It is a deep emotional and psychological defect. If you cannot give a round of. To this child right here. If you can't applaud for that. If you can't applaud for that moment. What. What's wrong?

[Michael Duncan]

What are you doing? And this is like. I come back to the myself in 2009 when we're sitting with a bunch of United States senators and we say, I know we're in a tough economic time. There's going to be a factory worker in this audience who has had a rough time, and it is because of the policies of this federal government. And the president's going to talk about ways we need to change that because of that person. You cannot be the person who's just sitting on your hands. You got to look at the humanity of that situation and understand that whether or not you agree with the president's prescription for solving it, you can definitely agree with the problem. You definitely have to understand the problem. And this wasn't even that complicated.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

This is just a kid with cancer who wants to be a cop. And they couldn't figure that out.

[Josh Holmes]

They couldn't.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, you want to talk about a rudderless, morally bankrupt party, this is what that looks like.

[Josh Holmes]

That's why this could be the end of the Democrat Party. This is not like a hyperbolic, click bait kind of idea. This is when you see that that's a deep, fundamental issue.

[Comfortably Smug]

They just don't care.

[Michael Duncan]

Deep, fundamental. These broken their brains so much. They would rather hate one man than love 330 million Americans.

[Josh Holmes]

That's it, dude. That's it right there.

[Michael Duncan]

That is just. It's something. Well, it turns out the American people have a perspective on that. Graphic one. If you don't.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, shit.

[Michael Duncan]

Noted conservative outlet CBS News finds that 76% of the American people approve of that speech. I can understand it. And I've seen some polls that dig deeper into the specifics of it. Time after time after time. He's coming up roses on this thing. And Democrats, man, they just lost their way.

[Comfortably Smug]

Tell you, it wasn't just Democrats. It was also several writers at the Washington Post and the New York Times because while Americans approved of this at 76%, there's a Washington Post headline that says, quote, were doomed. Nine columnists on Trump's address to Congress in the New York Times, quote, it was 90 plus minutes of bad moments. Nine opinion writers on Trump's address.

[Josh Holmes]

It's incredible.

[Michael Duncan]

Think about that.

[Comfortably Smug]

So out of touch.

[Michael Duncan]

It's just unbelievable. We've got a full menu of media react to all of this and what we think it means right after this.

[Comfortably Smug]

With Donald Trump back in office, one of his biggest adversaries, top Democrat Dick Durbin of Chicago, is leading the charge charged to derail President Trump's agenda at every turn. And now Senator Durbin has a new scheme, a government takeover of your credit card. Today, Americans have thousands of choices in credit cards, all with equal strong security. But Senator Durbin's plan will result in less competition and less security. That means more risk for your credit and your identity. Tell Republican senators, stop Dick Durbin's government takeover of your credit card before it's too late. Learn more at www.guardyourcard.com.

[Michael Duncan]

So, never missing a moment, the media has decided to clown themselves once again. And you got a little tease from Ashbrook about the opinion writers, the Washington Post and the New York Times, which I don't know what country they're living in or what planet they're on, but they have a take that I honestly don't even know how you can get to.

[Comfortably Smug]

I was told that the Washington Post opinion writers would be economic, writing about freedom.

[Michael Duncan]

Economic freedom. Right, exactly. Apparently the guy who owns the joint doesn't have say over what it is that they do.

[Comfortably Smug]

Maybe it starts in April.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, maybe that's right. Maybe there's an April one. There's a Q1 deadline for finding their senses. Well, if you ever want to go anywhere and have a good time for yourself or just see the worst humans on earth, flip on over to MSNBC and we've got delivery. Clip five please forgets and I let.

[Josh Holmes]

Myself feel joy about DJ and I hope he's alive for another, you know, 95 years.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Right?

[Josh Holmes]

And I hope he lives and the life he wants to live. He wants to be a cop. He knows what he wants to do. And maybe when you have childhood cancer that Chris crystallizes for you. And I hope he has a long life as a law enforcement officer, but I hope he never has to defend the United States Capitol against Donald Trump's supporters. And if he does, I hope he isn't one of the six who loses his life to suicide. And I hope he isn't one who has to testify against the people who carried out acts of seditious conspiracy and then live to see Donald Trump pardon those people.

[Michael Duncan]

What. How does it even get. You know, first of all, I don't know if you guys noticed within the.

[Comfortably Smug]

Clip, I let myself feel joy for dj.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, she's. She's. Yeah, she let herself feel joy and, like, she started in, and then they do the wide shot.

[Josh Holmes]

That's what I was going to say. Can we play that on like a mute?

[Michael Duncan]

When you see. When you see Saki.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, this is it on. Who is that?

[Michael Duncan]

Steel or Steel and Saki. Right. So these. These people, like, make a living out of saying absolutely reprehensible things. But. But, like, you know, Matt, I was like, where is this going? Look at her face. She's like, where is this going? And. And all of a sudden, the pivot happens right here. And then. And then all of a sudden, she goes to a wider shot.

[Josh Holmes]

Right there. Oh, man.

[Michael Duncan]

Anytime Jen Psaki is like, oh, shit, I'm gonna hate being on this panel right now. And then you see Steel just staring straight down at the ground. Imagine what it would take to get those people uncomfortable.

[Josh Holmes]

They're like, there's no way. She says, I hope the child with cancer doesn't commit suicide. Like, what? Why are you thinking about a poor kid with cancer killing himself? What level? This is beyond Trump derangement. This is, like, severe mental health crisis right here.

[Comfortably Smug]

He went through several Make a Wish type situations that were all very uplifting. One more that he could add next time around is a reverse Make a Wish where he says, msnbc in the gallery behind me. Very dishonest. Tonight I am revoking their press pass to everything at the White House.

[Michael Duncan]

It would have had a huge applause. Yeah, yeah. Because not to be outdone, Maddow was like, I can't see that. I'll see that. We'll raise you one clip six.

[Josh Holmes]

For the record.

[Michael Duncan]

And this is disgusting. The President made a spectacle out of praising a young man who thus far survived pediatric cancer. As if the President had something to do with that. This was in the midst of him praising Doge. Doge Cuts, among other things, halfway cut off funding for ongoing research into pediatric cancer. I mean, it's just not true, you know? I mean, like, these people are so dishonest. It is so bad. It's so dishonest. And it wasn't about anything other than a young man fulfilling his dream on the biggest stage America can provide a moment that everyone should just have pure joy in. And Rachel Manow finds disgusting your partisan. I mean, partisanship's a hell of a drug, guys. It's a hard. I mean, you know, they say heroin's tough, you know, And I've heard a lot about the opioid epidemic. I'm not sure that it beats partisanship. There is nothing that ruins a human mind worse than that.

[Josh Holmes]

So I lost a family member to childhood cancer, to leukemia. And if you can't have the baseline humanity for that, I mean, as a person, let alone someone who's. Who's on TV and knows you have. I mean, daily their audience gets more and smaller. But anyone listening to have any kind of a take like that, like, what's wrong with these?

[Michael Duncan]

What's wrong with you? Yeah, so that's just a couple of highlights and lowlights from what we saw. But we highlighted all this stuff not because we're like, the, you know, the first to market on what was Tuesday night's speech, but because these are the things that we think are gonna have a lasting impact. And if you're talking about the news of the week, that was this week, the first week of March, 2025, these are the things. Make no mistake. There is a fundamental change at this point where Democrats are not a serious party. And you can try to mask that through the media. You can try to pretend that nine columnists saw it differently. You can talk about a Zelensky meeting on Friday that you thought lacked decorum, or you can talk about trade policy or tariffs or what have you. It will not ever compete with 60 plus million people watching their behavior and how they handled these stories. It just won't. It just won't. So I know you've got a lot of favorite lines from the speech. We only just, like, scratched the surface. This sucker was two hours. And by the way, I didn't want it to end.

[Josh Holmes]

No.

[Michael Duncan]

I felt. I felt it's the first one in a long time where I've been like, what else do we got?

[Josh Holmes]

When it felt like he was wrapping up, I checked the clock and I was like, no way. It's 11.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

She really flew the fastest 20 minutes of my life.

[Michael Duncan]

I did, too. So there's a lot of favorite lines. Our question of the day to all of you is, what's your favorite line of the speech? Maybe it's a policy. Maybe it's something that. We have a lot in there, too, that we didn't discuss today. But your favorite stuff, get to all those you gotta like and subscribe on the YouTube in order to do it. When you do, we'll read them next week and we'll get to all that. We will also get to your comments from Tuesday's episode right after this. Hey, aren't you that PBM middleman? At your service, Doctor. Don't you get rebates that save money on medicines? Oh, PBMs like me get big rebates.

[Comfortably Smug]

So why do patients tell me they're.

[Michael Duncan]

Worried about their costs?

[Comfortably Smug]

No one says we have to share.

[Michael Duncan]

The savings with patients. Congress should make sure medicine savings go directly to patients, not middlemen. Visit phrma.org middlemen to learn more. Paid for by Pharma. All right, so you recall that on Tuesday we did a little preview of the State of the Union where we thought that the president would do. What he did basically was talk about the accomplishments, or the first six weeks essentially, of this administration. And we had a top five list and we asked you to add to it. To do that, we always start with a voice.

[Comfortably Smug]

Okay, first comment comes from Nanku. And Nanku writes any one of those top five wins could easily be number one. And there are other great things that he's done, like opening up the drilling, attempting to stop the WOKE agenda in public schools. Good luck with that one. And getting out of the climate agreements like Paris. But I think Trump's greatest overall accomplishment has been psychological. He has always been about the art of the deal, but now he has convinced us that the art of the possible when it comes to government, that's great. All our lives we heard you can't fight city hall. And we saw corruption, at least some of it, but knew we ultimately couldn't do anything about it. For the first time, we are seeing real change and at breathtaking speed. God bless President Trump for giving us true hope and optimism about our government. That's Nancy from Orange County, California.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, that's a comment, Nancy. That's absolutely right.

[Josh Holmes]

That's Duffel.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, we've said, we've commented on that. Our listeners, man. Yeah, yeah, that's good, man. Smart lady. Smart lady there in Orange County. Sorry you have to live in California, but Orange county, if you gotta live somewhere. Yeah, might as well as good as it gets. All right. Comment. Too smug?

[Josh Holmes]

This one comes from Suzanne Farrell. And Suzanne writes the hostages he's gotten released, not just the ones in the Middle east, but the men from Russia and the six Rick Grenell got released from Venezuela. I had no idea they were down There and that there are at least six more down there. That's like. That's another thing is how quickly he's accomplished this and the example of, like, the gentleman from Russia that he freed. Right.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah.

[Comfortably Smug]

Mark Fogel.

[Josh Holmes]

And then you compare that to what was the name of the basketball player lady, that. Brittney Griner. Yeah. We said Biden treated or traded the merchant of death, the world's number one illegal arms dealer, who's, as the Wall Street Journal reported last week, back in business and selling weapons to, like, Hamas.

[Michael Duncan]

Jesus. I mean, it's just. They're so bad. They're so. Thank God we have changed administrations because it shows you what was said here in these last two comments, what's possible.

[Josh Holmes]

Bingo.

[Michael Duncan]

Right? Comment 3 is from Linda Landtot. Great, great comment here. I truly believe that one of his greatest accomplishments has been the change in attitude within the United States. He's brought hope to us all. We're willing to suffer through a little pain that might come from implementing these policies in the short run to gain long run tremendously by the implementation of the fantastic directional policies. He and his crew are legendary. Every day is like watching the Avengers. I'm riveted. Yeah, man. I mean, looks so far so good, Linda. I mean, you're right. So far so good. It's been really fun to watch. All right, I want you to know, fellas, that I did not procure this particular.

[Josh Holmes]

So this is the home segment.

[Michael Duncan]

I didn't do it. I didn't do it. But the New York Post reported, and we have a dutiful journalistic imperative, shall we say, to bring this kind of news to the American people. They need to know about this kind of thing. Someone has painted a giant penis on the roof of an elementary school, and authorities are scrambling to cover it up. I want to put graphic two up for our YouTube viewers. There it is. There it is. It is gigantic. And that in and of itself is absolutely hilarious. The writing in this story simply must be fully.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, it's the New York Post doing what the New York Post does best.

[Michael Duncan]

It's just so good. It deserves a moment. So the Germans are involved in yet another battle of the bulge. It begins. Authorities are attempting to cover up a giant penis that was erected on top of a school in Berlin. The doppelganger has reportedly been painted atop a free Waldorf school in Krutzburg district back in 2022. That's right. A 65 foot long Titanic.

[Comfortably Smug]

Wait, it was painted? And it was painted three years ago.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. Wait you'll get to the, you'll get to. Hilarious. That is the Titanic. Tally whacker is so big that it's visible on Google Maps.

[Josh Holmes]

Like that's the thing is. So if you're like a parent trying to get directions to your kids school, you got, that's, that's popping up like.

[Michael Duncan]

Hey, do you know, do you guys have any idea where the school plays at? They're like, yeah, I think it's in this general vicinity. You're like, yeah, it's the one with the giant dick on the top. Yeah, that's the one. Whether this magnum opus was the work of street artists or students.

[Comfortably Smug]

Oh, come on, man.

[Michael Duncan]

Donatello.

[Josh Holmes]

Perhaps this guy was like, really out there.

[Comfortably Smug]

The kids who painted this are in high school now and they're legends in their neighborhood.

[Michael Duncan]

Donatello.

[Comfortably Smug]

Everybody's talking about it is yet unclear. Donatello.

[Michael Duncan]

The Doppelwanger has reportedly been painted atop the free waldorf school since 2022. However, authorities have attempted to paint over the edges in a half baked attempt to try to cut the schlong story short. Alas, the shape of the sex organ remains discernible on the roof of the Waldorf School, which specializes in education developed in the 1900s by Austrian social reformer Rudolf Steiner. So like, what's happened here is that somebody painted this thing and then they let it. Like no one knew it was there for a couple years. And then when they found out it was there, they were like, oh man, we gotta paint over this, obviously. And then they painted over it, but the sun had like sort of bleached it in, so there's nothing they can do. The school is just a permanent prick.

[Josh Holmes]

This is also like so symbolic of what has become of Germany. Like this country, like for so long after the Berlin Wall came down, you saw it went through a period of becoming this like great industrial giant. And they were able to accomplish things and build things, and now they've become so weak, like they can't accomplish anything. Their government is like, crime is skyrocketing in Germany. They can't get anything done. Like President Trump pointed out in his speech to Congress, they spend more money buying oil from Russia, then they're sending to Ukraine. Talk about an ass backwards country. Like, and then they can't even paint over this thing.

[Michael Duncan]

They can't even get the dick off the schools. Anyway. That's worth highlighting for many reasons, not the least of which is inspired writing.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, congratulations to the New York Post on that one.

[Michael Duncan]

New York Post. You and all your editors. Fantastic.

[Comfortably Smug]

You know, it's the kind of story that if you turn into your editor at the New York Post, he's like, son, you've come to the right place. We've clearly hired the right person.

[Michael Duncan]

Totally. Okay, so with all that, we have to get our. To our distinguished guest, fellas, Senator Tommy Tuberville, the coach. Well, sometimes when you're talking common sense and you know what's happening around, you want to bring an old ball coach in for something like that. Here's a guy who is a good friend of the program. You've been here a few times, but it turns out you're like a policymaker and stuff. I mean, it's all kinds of different stuff you got going on. Senator Tommy Tuberville. How are you, sir?

[Tommy Tuberville]

I'm doing good. Thanks for having me on. What? Hey, you guys come a long way. You've got a sign behind you now that means you've made it. I know.

[Michael Duncan]

We've tried to improve the aesthetic a little bit. You know, we got important people coming in here. So look, our view, this is a pretty seminal week in a lot of different ways. Thought the president did a nice job in the State of the Union. State of the Union, which we still call it. Thought Democrats be clowned themselves in a way that couldn't actually. Like, we couldn't. It's hard to actually put in words how bad their reaction to all of it was. You were in the chamber. What was your thoughts?

[Tommy Tuberville]

Well, we knew it was coming. They've acted like clowns since I've been up here for four years. I mean, my God, what. What Joe Biden and the Democrats did to this country just spent $7 trillion that we shouldn't have spent. That's the reason we're in such a bind right now. But, you know, I would always sit around and think, you know, what win have they had since I've been here? I said, this is miserable. And they haven't. They didn't have a win. Now, one good thing for the American people now, they won for themselves. Because what they want is power. That's all they want. They're pushing this climate hoax and all this nonsense, but it's amazing they can.

[Michael Duncan]

Like, create an industry and fund it.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Lbtq, whatever, all that stuff is. I mean, they. All they do is try to create a voting base and it's, you know, I had my bill on the floor for the third time on Monday. No biological men or boys playing against women. Now, President Trump did an executive order, but we have to make it law to make it Last forever. They voted against it. Every damn one of them voted against it. And you look at them. I know you got a daughter. I know you got granddaughters. Why in the world would you vote against this?

[Comfortably Smug]

It blows my mind. It's a 9010 issue. I don't understand why every single one of them is on the 10% side.

[Tommy Tuberville]

And they don't. They don't either. The problem is, you know, if you're the leader of the Senate and if I'm the leader of that bunch, and after I'd put up with this for, and just saw President Trump run him out of the stadium November 5th, I'd say, you know, let's look at the two or three issues. We got to get off our plate here.

[Michael Duncan]

Such a good point. We've been saying this forever. You'd think that there would be a moment where they would say maybe we headed in the wrong direction on something.

[Tommy Tuberville]

And they knew we were going to get 53 votes in the Senate from the Republicans. I just said, listen, here's the deal. Those of you that are up for election in two years, I want you to vote for this. Let's get it off the plate. You might not believe in it or really want to do it, but I'm tired of hearing about it. And they're going to use it against us every day. Not one of them voted for it. And that just shows you they have zero leadership over there. They have no game plan. All they want to do is try to trick people into thinking that they're for them. And they are just the opposite. I mean, they are. They're Marxists. They're not Americans. They don't believe in constitutional republic. They don't believe in anything that helps their American people. They want to control the American people, and it ain't working.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, that's what became so apparent to us last night in some of the stories that President Trump highlighted, which, you know, you look at the young woman who was injured, obviously, the volleyball player, by a man who spiked a ball on her face. She brain injuries as a result of that, and you think, just a basic humanity. You see that situation, you'd applaud her survivor mentality. You would applaud what she's gone through and understand this is a problem. And you would just show some basic humanity in the moment. Not a single one of them.

[Tommy Tuberville]

They hate Donald Trump so much because of what he stands for. They're not going to give an ounce of sympathy for anything. They just. They refuse to do it. And it's. It's costing them every day, I don't think. Surely there's one or two of them over there, I think all the time. Are they smart enough to understand they're running in front of a bus here and they're going to get run over and they going to get up again and it's going to turn around and come back and they're going to get run over again. It makes no sense. And you know, I'm a four year politician and every day it just amazes me, the stupidity of people and you know, it's just, it's hard to understand. But we got the ball in our court. They had it for four years.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Now we're playing offense and they're getting ready to get their tails beat.

[Michael Duncan]

Shoes on the other foot for sure. I mean, you spent a lot of time in college athletics. You've seen how this has sort of affected the entire landscape. Obviously why you authored the bill and why you've talked about this just about every day that I can remember. You know, the executive order goes a long way. We do need to make this into law. I mean, do you think. I mean, the NCAA sort of did a little reorganization on. At least they addressed it for the first time.

[Tommy Tuberville]

About that much? Yeah, about that much. They don't want to make a decision on anything, guys. That's the reason we're in trouble with this. Nil.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, right.

[Tommy Tuberville]

We can get into that.

[Michael Duncan]

I want to get into that in a minute. But you're right, I mean, they don't want to make a decision on any of this stuff. And so all of this just kind of gets pushed on further down the road where it's a political issue for somebody else to sort of figure out. Meanwhile, you've got girls continuing to struggle, competing against men. Like that story last night beat the record of some race by five hours.

[Tommy Tuberville]

I mean, what are we doing, weightlifting? He could have gone through a whole list of them.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Tommy Tuberville]

And it's, it's, it's obscene is what it is. And it's unfair and it's. And it's unsafe. The little girl that got hit, y'all did probably see that.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Tommy Tuberville]

You know, she gets hit in the head with a guy just spikes the ball and drilled her. Down she goes. She struggled ever since mentally, you know, with her brain injury. And they don't care. Not one of them stood up when she was introduced. I don't care if you believe in it or not, but here's a young lady that has been struggling for over a year just trying to make it in life. You think they care? No, it's about them. It's all about the Democrats. And I'd love to be able to say, you know, hey, at least half of them stood up or whatever. Not one. Not one. Because I guess they were giving orders. Just sit in your seat, look at your phone, hold up your signs, your stupid signs, and let's just play stupid again for another couple hours and let people know that we're going to continue on this clown show.

[Comfortably Smug]

And some of them were pretty rowdy out of the gate. I talked to. I talked to one of your colleagues who was sitting there, and he said it was almost hard to hear what the President was saying with those guys shouting on the other side because the room's a lot smaller than people think. You know, everybody watching this show, they don't really have a concept of how tight that is. And everybody's kind of on top of each other.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah.

[Comfortably Smug]

So if somebody's yelling, it's hard to.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Hear, but they were really interrupting him early. And they got the one. Al Green, or whatever his name is.

[Michael Duncan]

With the cane.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah, with the cane. And that was all orchestrated. You know, he. He sat in a place right in the middle, and he called him a liar. And, you know, you're cutting Social Security and all these things, which is hilarious.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, like, where do you even come up with it? It's, like, literally made up out of whole cloth. You and your colleagues have to be sitting there like, man, I like to think we're doing some things that are right, but they're killing themselves.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah. In four years, they overspent $7 trillion. Guys, we are dead broke. Our country's in so much trouble, and our only chance was get somebody like Trump and Elon doing what they're doing. We had. I mean, if we'd have got another Republican that would just. Okay, just been a normal president, it'd be over. Even Republican, Democrat would have been a disaster. But somebody that said, oh, I'll go in there. I want to make sure I get elected in four more years. And, you know, true politician.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. This required radical change.

[Tommy Tuberville]

But Trump says, hey, this is it.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Tommy Tuberville]

It's either get it done now or it'll burn to the ground and we'll have to build it back.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Tommy Tuberville]

You know, not one democracy has ever made it 250 years, and we make it 250 a year from July 4th. That'll be a great time.

[Michael Duncan]

I like our chances with this guy at the helm.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

But I'm not sure I would if.

[Tommy Tuberville]

It went the other way, well, how many people would make a decision that's going to hurt you and it's going to hurt everybody. It's going to hurt farmers, it's going to hurt small businesses. These tariffs are going to hurt for a while, but it's got to be done. I mean, we got it. We got to have a little bit of pain before we can, we can start working it back. And it's like cutting workers and, and doing the things that we need to do to build a business back. We are way over bloated with employees, this town. Oh my God.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Tommy Tuberville]

D.C. i mean, you know, nobody was working number one, but we had just millions of workers that they had put into place just to get votes. At the end of the day, that's what it was about.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. They create industries and then they fund them. And it's just one. We've always joked every Democratic administration looks like the previous one because they're all the same people and none of them leave. They just go work for some paper shuffling think tank down the road funded by George Soros and sit there for a while.

[Tommy Tuberville]

That's on both sides now. Now Democrats are bad, but we've got Republicans that they stay up for a while and then they decide they're going to go make some money and they get in the lobbying business because they know they have friends back and they call whoever and say, listen, I need you to meet with this group. That's all lobbyists do. They just get you, get you a meeting. Yeah. Get you a seat at the table with somebody that might have some pull. But things have to change in fundraising. I mean, it's way out of control. PACs, you know, the money that you raise and how you spend it. And again, I'm involved in that. You have to go out and raise money. It costs a lot of money. There was a race. Well, Herschel walker's race was $300 million.

[Michael Duncan]

That's wild, right?

[Tommy Tuberville]

For a position that pays 174,000.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tommy Tuberville]

We're a little bit bass ackwards here.

[Michael Duncan]

No question about it. I want to get back to the college stuff for a minute because I know you've been in conversations for a long time about nil and about college athletics and this new iteration of transfer portals and nil windows and all that. And there's been a lot of talk on Capitol Hill about, you know, do you do something about that? Is the federal government in position to set down some guidelines? What does that look like? I know you've had some points of view on that.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah. Joe Manchin and I did a bill for two years and it wasn't ours. We sat down with Presidents and ADs, NCAA players and we worked it out where it was a pretty good bill. Unfortunately, Chuck Schumer had to floor because they were in charge and unless we put unionization in it, it was a no go.

[Michael Duncan]

Is that right? Oh yeah, that was really it. It was just unionizing the players or nothing.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah, that's what they're all about.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, they cared a lot.

[Comfortably Smug]

I didn't realize that.

[Michael Duncan]

Cared a lot.

[Tommy Tuberville]

That's about voters. It's about voters. And so can you imagine 18 year olds unionizing? You know, first of all, we've gotten away from the education. There's no education to this anymore. It's all about players making money. And let me say this. I coached a long time and I don't mind players making money. I really don't. But I think all of them should make some, you know, some quarterbacks are making 7, $8 million and the center is making 25,000. It's a little off, but it's. They want us to do something. I've spent hours with Saban and all the guys that I stayed in the business with forever. Yeah, we can't help. We can't. I mean we. There's no way we can really help. That's the reason we had the ncaa and the problem with NCAA is they can't control football. Yeah. They don't make any money off of it, number one and make all their money off basketball tournament conferences. So you heard a while ago President Trump did the executive order on women's sports. Right. Well, they make a ruling that kind of pacified, you know, our president, but didn't me because I read between the lines. And if you read it, players, biological men and biological boys can be on the team, can practice, can shower, can dress with women. They can't compete.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, I didn't miss.

[Tommy Tuberville]

I missed that.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah, I didn't.

[Tommy Tuberville]

So what is it they doing? Why they do that? They don't want lawsuits. They. And you got to give it to them. They fought more lawsuits and there's more coming. What's going to happen next is there's no eligibility rules out there. You can play forever in college.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

Notice that. I mean there's guys playing in 24 kid at Vanderbilt. Yeah. It seems like forever.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Juco for two years and then he comes plays for two years in big boys league. And he said, well those are the two years back. Okay, we'll give them back to you. I'd love to be able to help them. It's going to be so hard to do it.

[Michael Duncan]

It seems like it. And there's a lot of your old colleagues that decided, you know, Saban's being one of them. Mack Brown. You look at the Virginia basketball coach, Bennett, the Villanova basketball coach. I mean, everybody sort of has the same story. On the way out, they're like, this isn't. This isn't what I do anymore.

[Tommy Tuberville]

No, you can't build a team. It's not about relationships. It's not about education or development. The players are running the teams now. You holler at me, I'll find a place to get the same amount of money somewhere else. For the life of me. And I didn't coach during all the transfer portals and all that. For the life of me, why do you have a transfer portal after. I understand, after the season. But then you go through spring practice and you have another one and you.

[Michael Duncan]

Open it up again.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Why would you do that? I know there's a player last year that transferred from a team. He went to another team for 500,000, got paid, went through spring practice, didn't like it, quit and went back to the team he transferred from.

[Comfortably Smug]

Well, there's one guy I would care.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Comfortably Smug]

There is one guy running towards college football, and there's been a lot of talk about how well he's going to do this year at Bill Belichick at North Carolina. I wonder if you have any thoughts on whether you think he'll succeed.

[Tommy Tuberville]

He's a good. Proven. He's a good coach. Yeah. But if this works, I'd be shocked. Okay. You're an athletic director. You go out and you hire a young guy and pay him a million dollars a year. You take that other 8 million that you was going to pay somebody like Bill Belichick and go buy your players. Players win games. Coaches ain't gonna win a game. They're gonna lose one. Yeah, but they're not gonna win games. You can't build a program anymore. Bill Belichick, Nick Saban, myself, we were all came up through the knowledge of, this is how you build a team. You go recruit, you bring them in, develop. Develop players, you know, work the heck out of them. Beat people in the fourth quarter. That's how I did it. And you know. And you know, they're always going to play hard for you. I mean, now it's minor league sports. And so what you're going to end up having is you're going to have all these teams which what at the end of the day, one AA, and I call them one double A division, two and all that. You probably got 300 or so and you're going to end up with three divisions. You're going to have to the bottom hundred that just maybe get a scholarship. Then you're going to have the scholarship group of the middle group of the hundred. Then you're going to have the boys that are going to get paid. What's going to happen? Yeah, the only way around it, man.

[Michael Duncan]

And they all got GMs now. I mean, that's the other thing that I find fascinating, right? You've got the athletic director, you got a head coach, and Notre Dame just.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Hired a general manager from Detroit lions.

[Michael Duncan]

You got GMs. Yeah, I mean, oh, yeah, it is professional.

[Tommy Tuberville]

And we spent. For all my years, there wasn't a week go by I didn't talk to our players about drugs, about gambling, because gambling is a big problem. You don't think we don't have a gambling problem now? Oh, yeah. Oh, it's, it's out of control. But they don't want to catch it. So you got the drugs, the gambling and all the things that surround, you know, the things agents. Yeah, you know, hey, don't, don't talk to agents now. They got, they got guys come off the street, say, listen, I can get, I can get you 25,000 more to another school. He's not registered. They don't, you don't know who he is. He most time lying to the athlete. There's no structure to what they're doing now. You can't, we can't keep this up. It's going, it'll, it'll ruin it all.

[Comfortably Smug]

It breaks down the relationship between the coach and the player. And that makes a difference in a game.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's brutal. And what I hear is he sounds sort of fatalistic about the ability to actually put in any sort of governing.

[Tommy Tuberville]

But we Talked about earlier NFL back in the 60s, Congress gave them antitrust, which they could be a monopoly. So what they did, NFL and AFL all came together and they did one TV right for everybody. Well, now they make 3 or 400 million a team a year. Now if they're going to make it in college, they're going to do the same. All of them going to have to come together and then they have two or three spokesmen and have a revenue and they all come in, you know, TV said, okay, we'll give you this or that they would triple their TV revenue. They'd go from 4 billion to 10, 12, 14, 15 billion overnight. And then you'd have more money. That's where the money's at. And that's really the only way they're gonna be able to do that.

[Michael Duncan]

You want a part time job running the NCAA or at least one of these conferences, because it seems like the guy's got some good ideas.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Well, when you spend 40 years looking at the good and the bad and the ugly, because I've seen it all.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Tommy Tuberville]

But I couldn't do it in this day and time. I could not.

[Michael Duncan]

It's too frustrating.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah, it's just frustrating to have to. You can't build a team. You just gotta buy one and hope you buy the right one. And if you don't, you know, things aren't good.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, man. Well, we got maybe one more piece of business and a couple things we want to get to. Look a lot of big things on the horizon. Obviously the whole reconciliation process, that carries much of the Trump agenda. And it's going to be tricky. Although I feel like in the Senate, you tell me your perspective, but it seems like you've got a lot more consolidation within that conference and unity about a purpose here in terms of getting tax deals done and getting what we need to do and energy in the border and everything else. You optimistic about all that?

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah, we got a chance to do it right.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Problem is you got the House and the Senate.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Now the House passed something. Now, to me, it's not enough tax, it's not enough cuts, but we have to get the tax bill redone because if not next year everybody will pay at least a thousand dollars more a month in tax. We can't afford that. Well, you know, the Democrats, they're licking their chops because they'll move right back in.

[Michael Duncan]

That sounds great for them.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. So we're doing it, but we got the debt limit coming up in the next week and are we going to shut the government down? Yeah, if we do, it'd be because of the Democrats. But who's going to get to blame? Yeah, we are.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Tommy Tuberville]

And so we got to get something done. The House has done something. We've done something. I think at the end of the day we'll see us merge and leadership will hopefully get us out of this mess and pick the best of both worlds.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, and it's where it's helpful to have President Trump and his leadership, too. I mean, there's a sort of a unifying message at the top here that, you know, it's tough to do when you don't have a president in your own party.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah. And the president, I will say this. He. You hear all the Democrats talking about, you know, this is for the billionaire. President Trump is standing up for the middle class is exactly what he's doing. I mean, he can care less about corporations. They're going to get their tax break. Billionaires, they're going to make their money no matter what happens. We do not have much of a middle class left because the Democrats about destroyed it. We about lost all of our farms. I mean, they just run them out of business because of regulations and the input costs. But there's. We have got to save the working man. And there's two things that President Trump knows he has to get done. He's got to cut spending and he's got to grow the country, get manufacturing back. If we don't do those two things, the rest of it makes no difference. So we've got to build a bigger tax base. I think we get about $5 trillion a year into, you know, sent in from people across the country, but we spend 7 trillion. We can't do that anymore.

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Or it's over.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, every time we've cut taxes, we end up with more revenue because the country grows.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Exactly. You cannot explain that to a Democrat.

[Michael Duncan]

Isn't it amazing? It's an amazing concept that happens each and every time. And they still look at you.

[Tommy Tuberville]

His tax cuts, our revenue went up 30%. Wait a minute. It cut taxes? That means we don't have as much coming in these people. I mean, you can't explain common sense.

[Michael Duncan]

The intentional stupidity of it.

[Tommy Tuberville]

We got more people working and we got more people paying in. That's how we're getting more money, you know, but.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, I know. I mean, look, I can sense the frustration of dealing with Democrats. Lord, you know, bless you for. For even trying. A lot of people want you to come home and run for governor. You giving that any thought?

[Tommy Tuberville]

Well, here's what happened. That's what I was going to do at the beginning. And then we had a governor that was impeached. Kay Ivey moved in, our lieutenant governor. And I said, you know, I'm not going do that.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Tommy Tuberville]

So I see we got Doug Jones up here as a Democrat, and I said, you know, I can beat that guy. Yeah. You know, so I worked my tail off for about a year and a half, campaigning seven stops a day all over the state, because I knew I had to get the Alabama People to vote for me. My wife says, how you gonna get those votes? You stuck your thumb in their face every day for 15 years to scream.

[Michael Duncan]

War Eagle and then roll up to Tuscaloosa.

[Tommy Tuberville]

But I win. And now K Ivey's going out and all that. Same groups want me to run for governor. I'm liking it here. I like representing Alabama. I don't have to make my mind up for months anyway because you can't even start raising money till summer. But I'll decide. But I tell you, it's a lot better now. My God. I mean, it's a lot better. I mean, it ain't even close.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Tommy Tuberville]

I mean, they just. They kicked you in the teeth and they turn you over and kick you again. I mean, that's how it was.

[Michael Duncan]

I know it.

[Tommy Tuberville]

It is. It's been. I never seen anything like it when they just. They had it all. And then we had a guy president that didn't know what day it was. And we all knew he wasn't running.

[Michael Duncan]

The show, except he'd read in the newspaper that he was doing mental gymnastics behind closed doors every day and the.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Media covered for them. That's one of our biggest problems. If the media was non biased and just called balls and strikes like they should, I mean, we'd be so much better off than we would.

[Michael Duncan]

We probably wouldn't have the ruthless variety program. Probably.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Mainstream media is gone.

[Michael Duncan]

It is.

[Tommy Tuberville]

They've lost it. Yeah, you got a few cable shows now that are pretty good, but cnn, I mean, they got to be leaking oil bad.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah, it sure seems like it. They're just no fun.

[Tommy Tuberville]

But it's helped y'all, but.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, it has.

[Tommy Tuberville]

My son told me about a year and a half ago, I was the first senator come out for President Trump. Now, so you're crazy. He can't win. When I said, you wait and see. And then he said, listen, dad, you need to start listening to rfk. You need to start listening to Elon Musk, what they're saying on podcast. Joe Rogan, Ruthless, all you guys. Because y'all tell it like it is, but you explain it. And people listen to it. They don't. They don't do it on two minutes of mainstream tv. They just.

[Comfortably Smug]

People know we have a point of view. We don't hide that from anybody. And, and you watch mainstream news and they pretend like they're unbiased, but everybody knows they are.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, the topic selection is something.

[Tommy Tuberville]

As long as you tell people the truth. And, you know, we, we have all these nominations And I tell all these nominees, listen, NIH Director Day, I told him, listen, Fauci ran. He ruined, you know, trust in this country when it comes to medical because of COVID And the first thing you got to do is get a good team and build trust back with American people, you know?

[Michael Duncan]

Absolutely.

[Tommy Tuberville]

We got, we got these bio labs all over the world that we fund, that people are going, why in the hell do we fund these bio labs in Ukraine? They got eight over there, eight or 10. And their bombs are flying everywhere and they got germs in these things. I mean, I mean, it just, it's.

[Comfortably Smug]

It's good advice. I hope he takes it.

[Tommy Tuberville]

I hope he takes it. Yeah, well, I hope he takes it. He will. He will.

[Michael Duncan]

So you brought us a little momento here, some Vulcan gin. Turns out it's a home hometown product.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah, I've drank all the vodka, so we didn't have vodka in it. And to bring you. But that's Charles Barkley. Yeah, he started at 5, 6. Friend of yours? Yeah, good friend. Big Auburn guy. Comes a lot of the football games, basketball games. When I first got to Auburn, they, you know, I'd play in a, in a, in a Pro Am or something. Who play Me playing with Barkley. After playing with that swing for about a year or so. Yeah, they'd ask me, coach, we need you to play in this, this, this tournament. I'll play as long as I'm not having to play with Charles. But now it's golf swing's good.

[Comfortably Smug]

Oh, is it really?

[Tommy Tuberville]

Oh, yeah. Better. He's worked at it and got some lessons. Yeah, he plays it enough.

[Michael Duncan]

Pro.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah, Golf swing better. Lost a little weight? Well, maybe a little bit. Yeah, maybe a little bit.

[Comfortably Smug]

What a great person, personality that guy's got.

[Tommy Tuberville]

I've always. Unbelievable.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah, he's a real entertainer.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. Well, one of the great things about you and your career from sports to here, is the relationships that you've made, the things that you've been able to do, the concepts of all the things we're talking about, relate it back to just normal everyday conversation as we live.

[Tommy Tuberville]

In the greatest country on the face of the earth. Not close.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Tommy Tuberville]

And I've had the chance to travel around the world several times in the last few years. Being in politics, can't wait to get home. People don't realize what's happened to Europe. Europe's gone. They've lost Europe. Why? Immigration. And that's the reason. That's what they were trying to do here. The globalists were trying to Overrun us here. And thank God President Trump got in. We got Homan and new Homeland Security group. First of all, you got to stop them. And then I have even people from my constituents in Alabama coast. We've got them all over and they're not working fast enough. And I tell them, listen, we got to stop them coming in first. We got to get the wall. We got to get all the technology done. They will go home, I promise you. We can only do one thing at a time, but unfortunately, it's going to cost us billions of dollars of what the Biden administration did to this country.

[Michael Duncan]

Through immigration, no question about it. But we're heading in the right direction. Thanks to President Trump, your leadership. Senator, thank you so much for coming in.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Thank you.

[Michael Duncan]

It's always a pleasure to see you. Well, keep us updated on everything.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Well, nil is going to be interesting because we're going to make a big push. I'd love to be able to help. They really. I tell my buddies, you don't want the federal government involved. Yeah, but if we get involved, it. It ain't a rule, it's a law.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Tommy Tuberville]

And so. But I just don't think we can pull it off. And, you know, with everything that the Democrats want to do through this, so.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, well, if we can, I think you can. You're the one to do it. So. Thanks so much for joining us. Until next time.

[Tommy Tuberville]

Thank you.

[Comfortably Smug]

Man, that guy is just so fantastic. I mean, every time you hear him talk, the libs lose their minds. And that's how you know he's over the target.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, it's. It's so true. He's shown up with a very specific idea of what it is that he wanted to do. He's become very popular. Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, the issue of getting men out of women's sports is like an 8020 issue. It's a good one to fight on.

[Michael Duncan]

It is a good one to fight, fight on. We're going to follow up with him and undoubtedly our conversations continue at some point. He's going to get a jacket. I think this was like three times that he's been on.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, that's right.

[Michael Duncan]

We're going to start passing out a lot of jackets around here, Wolf. I hope we got a tailor on the ready. Anyway, with that, fellas, I think we've done it.

[Josh Holmes]

I think so. Absolute banger of an episode. Gentlemen, thank you so much, Senator Tuberville, and thank you so much to our dear listeners. Remember, if you have not yet, go to our YouTube, hit that subscribe button more fun and video. So until next time, minions, keep the faith, hold the line, and own the libs. We'll see you Tuesday. Stay ruthless.