There's No Such Thing as a Moderate Democrat + Tom Homan and Sec. Brooke Rollins

Summary

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Ruthless Podcast Episode Summary

Episode: "There's No Such Thing as a Moderate Democrat + Tom Homan and Sec. Brooke Rollins"
Date: January 22, 2026
Hosts: Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, John Ashbrook
Guests: Tom Homan (Border Czar), Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins

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Episode Overview

This episode of the Ruthless Podcast delivers its signature blend of sharp, conservative political commentary and humor, taking aim at the myth of the "moderate Democrat." The hosts dissect recent Democratic moves in Virginia and beyond, tackling policy contrasts, strategic messaging, and party identity. The show features in-depth interviews with former ICE Director Tom Homan on immigration and sanctuary cities, and Secretary Brooke Rollins on agricultural policy, government fraud, and dietary reforms under the Trump administration.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Myth of the Moderate Democrat

Segment Start: [02:54]

• The hosts challenge the corporate media’s portrayal of certain Democrats as moderates, specifically Abigail Spanberger (new Governor of Virginia) and Mikie Sherrill (NJ).
• Discussion centers on how Democrats campaign as centrists but govern with a far-left agenda once elected, referencing the script seen with Joe Biden and now Spanberger.
• Josh Holmes: "[Democrats] never talk that way… But they never talk that way. They care about the base, not mainstream voters." [04:57]
• Smug: "Their whole game plan is to dupe voters." [14:32]

Notable Quotes:

• Smug: "Every single sentence in that ad was her trying to express, 'I'm a moderate, I'm a moderate, I'm a moderate.'" [09:29]
• Josh Holmes: "And then they turn around and show up with banning your leaf blower, letting all the illegals free, taxing the shit out of every single thing." [18:22]

Moderate Messaging vs. Policy Reality

• The hosts play and critique Spanberger’s gubernatorial campaign ad stressing bipartisanship and lowering costs ([08:32]), then enumerate her first executive actions:
  • Rescinding state cooperation with ICE
  • Proposals for expansive tax increases, new regulations, and voting law expansions
  • Gun control measures and other progressive wishlist items

John Ashbrook: "What if they're convicted [illegals at a courthouse]? … This is a house of law, we don't allow laws in here." [13:29]

2. Sanctuary Cities, Immigration, and Public Safety

Segment Start: [25:56]; Interview: Tom Homan

• John Ashbrook: Asks Homan when immigration became permanently partisan, how media perception changed.
• Tom Homan: Outlines a shift during Obama’s second term (after “deporter-in-chief” nickname), escalating under Trump due to clear enforcement versus the Biden era’s laxity. [27:00]
• ICE, under hostile states (like Virginia’s new admin), is forced to use more resources to capture and deport public safety threats.
• Sanctuary cities, says Homan, have become magnets for criminals and potential terror cells.
• Tom Homan: "They hate Trump more than they care about the safety of their community." [28:51]

Notable Quotes:

• Tom Homan: "[Democratic leaders] sold our national security out for future political power." [32:12]
• John Ashbrook: "So you think it's fair to say that sanctuary cities are the most dangerous cities to live in in our country?"
• Tom Homan: "Absolutely, yes." [34:34]

3. Media and Messaging: The “Moderate” Ruse

Segment Start: [05:04 & 13:34]

• Drawing parallels with Biden's 2020 campaign, the hosts describe a recurring Democratic pattern: “run as a moderate, govern as a radical.”
• Strict party discipline: once moderates get power, they pursue the deepest corners of the progressive policy agenda.

Notable Quotes:

• John Ashbrook: "Democrats will do this time and time again. And if you're tricked by them a third time, who's the idiot?" [13:48]
• Josh Holmes: "You know, they promise nothing and then deliver the Communist Manifesto." [19:17]

4. Davos, Europe, and Trump Abroad

Segment Start: [43:21]

• Reactions to Trump’s visit to the Davos economic summit ("Davos Douchebag Summit”).
• Macron’s sunglasses, European political theater, and Trump’s dominance in foreign political scenes are humorously critiqued.
• Trump’s diplomatic approach and brash nationalism highlighted as contrasting European leaders' “weakness” or hypocrisy, referencing NATO and oil dependency.

Notable Quotes:

• Smug: "All this hippie bullshit environmentalism you’re doing is just making your countries completely reliant on Russian oil." [48:17]
• Bassent: "Governor Newsom, who strikes me as Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken, may be the only Californian who knows less about economics than Kamala Harris." [49:12]

5. Agriculture, Food Policy, and Government Reform

Segment Start: [60:10]; Interview: Secretary Brooke Rollins

• Rollins describes reshaping U.S. agriculture policy, securing new trade deals, and restoring rural America’s prosperity after the Biden years.
• Discusses rolling out tariffs ("Liberation Day"), dramatic fraud reduction efforts in the SNAP (food stamp) program, and fighting entrenched interests in dietary guidelines – including overturning Michelle Obama’s low-fat school lunch policies.
• Advocacy for real food, whole milk, and butter, based on current science.
• The administration’s focus: don’t serve special interests or donors—serve Americans.

Notable Quotes:

• Rollins: "Sometimes God and Donald Trump have other plans for you than you have for yourself." [61:07]
• Rollins: "We have 44 million people who take food stamps… we found 200,000 dead people getting the program benefit… This is in the red states." [69:47]
• Brooke Rollins: "We're not beholden to anyone but the American people. That's all we care about, is serving the American people." [78:16]

6. Lightning Round: King of the Hill (Political Grift Edition)

Segment Start: [51:36]

• The hosts play their recurring game, “King of the Hill,” pitting notorious personalities Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson against each other for most outrageous antics/grifting (e.g., "Fuck ICE" merch sales).
• Frequent, good-natured accusations of “court rigging” and biased judging add to the show’s levity.

7. Light-hearted Exchanges, Listener Engagement, and Closing

• Listener “question of the day” is announced: "What is the best way to help voters understand there’s no such thing as a moderate Democrat?" ([38:19])
• Rapid-fire audience comments, callbacks to classic movie scenes, and inside podcast jokes.
• The episode closes with reminders about an upcoming live show in Philadelphia and gratitude to guests and listeners.

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Notable Memorable Moments & Quotes (With Timestamps)

• Abigail Spanberger’s “moderate” campaign: "Every single sentence in that ad was her trying to express, 'I'm a moderate, I'm a moderate, I'm a moderate.'" – Smug [09:29]
• Democratic Immigration Policy: "Her first orders of business...Weaken Election laws and make it easier for illegal aliens to operate in Virginia." – Smug [13:05]
• Sanctuary cities as terrorist rendezvous points: "Absolutely. They know they're protected even in the country illegally." – Tom Homan [32:37]
• Purposeful government fraud: "For me, there's moments of like, oh, how did we get to this spot? But then I decided, well, I've got to double down, because if I don't... then we really are done." – Brooke Rollins [74:01]
• On dietary guidelines flips: "Eat real food, get whole milk back in schools, and let's get our country healthy again." – Brooke Rollins [69:06]
• Davos and international humor: "Governor Newsom... Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken." – Bassent [49:12]
• On "King of the Hill" grifting: "Anything you can talk about in the course of a week, he's slapped on the side of stemware." – Josh Holmes [58:41]

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Important Timestamps for Segments

• [02:54] – Main discussion on Democratic "moderates" and the reality gap
• [07:12] – Abigail Spanberger’s self-portrayal and ad critique
• [09:36] – Spanberger’s early executive orders in Virginia
• [13:29] – Effects of law enforcement restrictions in “sanctuary” states
• [25:56] – Introduction and interview with Tom Homan
• [32:34] – Discussion of sanctuary cities and public safety threats
• [43:21] – Trump at Davos/Europe segment
• [60:10] – Interview with Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins
• [69:47] – Deep dive on SNAP/fraud and reform
• [51:36] – "King of the Hill" political grifter game
• [38:19] – Question of the day: Is there any such thing as a moderate Democrat?
• [86:06] – Episode wrap-up

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Conclusion

This vibrant, policy-heavy episode of Ruthless showcases the hosts’ skill at blending irreverent political analysis with humor and detailed interviews. Guests Tom Homan and Brooke Rollins provide expert insights on immigration, fraud, agriculture, and the fight against progressive overreach. The episode issues a recurring call to listeners to challenge moderate Democrat narratives and provides plenty of ammunition for doing so—all while keeping the tone punchy and entertaining.

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Transcript

[Michael Duncan]

Journalist, industrial complex. Love to, you know, pair her with Mickey Sherrill up in New Jersey and be like, this is the future of the Democratic Party.

[Josh Holmes]

These are just moderate women. Look, they were.

[Michael Duncan]

They were in intelligence.

[Brooke Rollins]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

You know, these are serious people.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

These are not lunatics.

[John Ashbrook]

Stopping the ability of ICE to be able to deport terrorists.

[Michael Duncan]

And who would have thunk it? You know that maybe places where people don't enforce the law are magnets for people who want to break the law. Weird, you know, huh?

[Smuggler]

They're like, we want to disarm Americans. We want to empower illegals y to make elections as corrupt as possible.

[John Ashbrook]

Washington politicians are always getting in your wallet. Now they're messing with your credit card. Your credit card and the security it offers are under attack. The Durbin Marshall credit card bill would change the nation's payment system to benefit corporate megastores like Walmart and Target at the expense of everyday Americans. Credit cards keep your payments secure and provide rewards that families use to help make everyday purchases more affordable. The Durbin Marshall mandates would let corporate megastores cut corners on credit card processing, routing transactions over cheaper, untested networks with weaker security and fewer protections. That means higher risk of fraud, greater chance of stolen personal data, and the loss of rewards programs just so corporate megastores can pocket billions of dollars in higher profits. Tell Congress to guard your card. Visit guardyourcard.com to take action and and learn more.

[Josh Holmes]

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.

[Smuggler]

Keep the fate, hold the line and own the lids.

[John Ashbrook]

It's time for our main event.

[Josh Holmes]

Good Thursday to you. Welcome back to the Ruthless Friday program. We got an awful lot to get to. There's a lot of news being made at home and abroad and a lot of yucks to have. I'm Josh Holmes, along with comfortably Smuggler, Michael Duncan, and John Ashbrook. Left to right, across your radio dial. As always, we've got a couple of big interviews for people. Tom Homan. Everybody's wanted a little piece of Tom Homan, of course. I mean, his stuff seems to be always the thing that's in the news, so we might as well go right to the source, and Smash does just that. We also hear from the Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins. So, administration heavy episode, but we've got some other things to talk about. And, you know, look, we're coming into the midterms. We've all noticed these candidate announcements and whatnot, and it's our commitment to you, the listener, that we're going to have a whole bunch of candidates on here before we get to primary season so you can all hear from everybody and figure out who you want to support based on how they do on the ruthless variety program. I mean, that seems like a bare minimum that we should be able to accomplish.

[John Ashbrook]

Great idea.

[Josh Holmes]

So we're gonna do an awful lot of that. But I think what is missing from the conversation is this larger argument that of course, your corporate media is just gonna, like, skim through and not pay any attention to whatsoever. It's always like, oh, what's the Trump approval rating? What's the generic ballot here? Talk about the generic ballot. Well, there is no such thing as a generic ballot at the election booth. There's a choice between candidates. And one of the things that's occurred to me based upon what's happened here this week is the conversation that needs to happen based upon where Republicans are governing what they're doing. They're securing the border, they're lowering your taxes, they're trying to keep your communities safe. You can make an argument about whether you agree or disagree with tactics and all those things, but, like, basically what they're saying they're going to do in the context of a campaign is what they did. I mean, this is why President Trump was elected. He went to camera, his vice president went to camera and said, here are the things that we're going to do. And then over the last year, and you saw the full year in review press conference that Trump did and everything, it's that they did that contrast that with where the Democrats are now. All of us, by virtue of our new affiliation with Fox News, have done an awful lot of commentary on the channel and on this show about what is the Democratic Party today. And we've been pretty clear that it's quite obvious to us, having worked in this line of work for a long time, where the pressure points are and Democrats are entirely a downstream effect of, like the Mamdani vision. That's where the base of the Democratic Party is. It's the only thing they're responsive to. You look at Chuck Schumer running for his life. This is supposed to be the guy it's headed. The institution that presses pause on all these base instincts shuts down the government for a record amount of time in order to save his. That's the only thing they care about. Right? But they never talk that way.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, and the reason why they don't is because that is not actual governing coalition of the United States of America. It's a small, loud minority of the Democratic Party. But it does govern the way that they Operate.

[Josh Holmes]

It does. And so every once in a while you get a little vignette somewhere in the country that provides an overview of what it is that we're saying. You can take our word for it, and I hope you do. But then there are confirmations along the way of what it is that we're saying. Enter Abigail Spanberger, the new governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Of course, she replaces Glenn Youngkin, good friend of the program, who I think ran a very moderate governing coalition in a very purple state. Didn't get to do everything he wanted to do because he had a Democrat legislature, but he certainly held the line from a lot of crazy shit. And here comes along Abigail Spamberger. And I remember doing all these interviews on Fox and elsewhere where you'd have Democratic pundits where I'd say, like, look, Mount Bounty's the thing. This is what, this is the guy and the vision that embodies what the Democratic Party is trying to accomplish. That's the governing vision that they want to do. And the pushback that I got 10 times out of 10 was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is Mamdani. It's very specific, very urban area, much more progressive in the rest of the country. Our vision and our new face of the Democratic Party are people like Abigail Spanberger. Abigail Spanberger perfectly encapsulates the moderate family vision for what the Democratic Party is today.

[Michael Duncan]

And the Democrat journalist, industrial complex. Love to pair her with Mickey Sherrill up in New Jersey and be like, this is the future of the Democratic Party.

[Josh Holmes]

These are just moderate women.

[Michael Duncan]

Look, they were in intelligence.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

You know, these are serious people.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

These are not lunatics.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, and she's such a moderate. I mean, she'll tell you herself. Let's go to clip one. She'll talk about it.

[Michael Duncan]

Unlike some of her more liberal colleagues.

[John Ashbrook]

What a hilarious intergohance through what she.

[Michael Duncan]

Calls, quote, passionate pragmatism.

[Brooke Rollins]

I can disagree with people on 100 things. And that 101st thing we agree on is a good place to start that conversation.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, we're gonna start on everything we agree with.

[Smuggler]

And that's the thing, is this was all part of the plan. And if you look across, Minneapolis is a great example. Who are the first, like the frontline troops you see attacking ice going ham. It's not Somalians. It's not the illegal immigrants themselves. It's a bunch of these like middle aged white ladies who are essentially just like shock troops of the ideology of Mamdani. And we're seeing more and more Abigail Spamberger, same thing you're seeing.

[Josh Holmes]

So but to your point, they don't market themselves that way. And I think this is an important refrain that you'll hear from the Ruthless Friday program until next November, which is how these people market themselves versus what they do. How is it that Abigail Spamberger wins a gubernatorial race when she's following a Glenn Youngkin Republican, obviously conservative governance in a state like Virginia. Well, here's an ad. Clip 1A I'm Abigail Spanberger.

[Brooke Rollins]

I grew up walking the halls of Tucker high school. After 9 11, I walked the halls of CIA as a case officer working counterterrorism. And then I walked the halls of Congress where despite the dysfunction, I got things done and was named the most bipartisan member of Congress from Virginia as.

[Josh Holmes]

A bipartisan to lower costs, lower costs.

[Brooke Rollins]

To make sure our schools prepare all our kids for jobs that future span.

[Josh Holmes]

Burger for governor, service country, commonwealth. Okay, so what that is is like if you're concerned about weird tranny ideology in your school, she's got something for you. If you're concerned about leftist ideology, she's the most bipartisan, most bipartisan. She wants to lower costs because, you know, heaven forbid she looks back at her voting record with the inflation reduction act and everything else that brought you the higher cost. She wants to speak to.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, she got stuff done in Congress.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, she got stuff done. She got stuff done. She's a real middle of the road thought, full pragmatic.

[Smuggler]

And that's the thing is Democrat, every single sentence in that ad was her trying to express, I'm a moderate, I'm a moderate. I'm a moderate.

[Josh Holmes]

Exactly right. I mean, the message is very, very clear. So what's her first act as Governor of Virginia? Clip 2 Spanberger didn't wait long to get to work. Following her swearing in ceremony, signing 10 executive orders, the one getting the most attention rescinds a Youngkin administration order that.

[Michael Duncan]

Required and encouraged state and local law enforcement agencies to to work with ICE.

[Josh Holmes]

On enforcing immigration laws.

[Michael Duncan]

Governor Youngkin issued the order last February.

[John Ashbrook]

Saying, quote, virginia is not a sanctuary state.

[Tom Homan]

Okay.

[Smuggler]

To make your first order of business. Excuse me. To oppose ICE to support illegal aliens who we've seen across this country committing horrific crimes, human trafficking, murders, rapes, all the worst things you can think of for your first act of Governor to be like, I am on the side of illegal immigrants. That's not very moderate.

[Josh Holmes]

It's even worse than I oppose ice. It's that I've instructed our law enforcement in the state not to cooperate.

[Michael Duncan]

This can't be true because she told us to camera she was gonna get started on all the stuff we agree about.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, not only that, Michael, but she was a CIA case officer. This person understands law and order evidently. Well, not the case. So Bret Baier picks up on this on Fox News and does a little vignette on all the things that she and her allies and the Democratic legislature want to have accomplished for the people of Virginia next year.

[Guest/Announcer]

Clip Douay that's the new governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Abigail Spamberger ran for that office as a moderate. But the executive order she talked about is state and local police not cooperating with ICE to get criminal illegal immigrants. There's also a list of now the Democrats control the legislature that a number of bills that have been put forward. You can't read it here, but let me just go through it. Sales tax on Uber Eats Amazon Sales tax on admissions to a variety of businesses. Create two new hire tax brackets. 10% tax bracket for anyone making over 1 million 3.8 investment tax raise the hotel tax. New personal property tax on landscaping equipment. Ban gas powered leaf blowers. Guarantee illegal aliens free education. Make it illegal to approach somebody at an abortion clinic. Extend the time absentee ballots can be received after election day. Allow people to cast their votes electronically through the Internet. Expand ranked choice voting. Send the deadline for ballot curing. Redact the addresses of political candidates from FOIAs. Add Virginia to the national Popular Vote Compact. Make it illegal to hand count ballots. $500 sales tax on firearm suppressors assault weapons in large capacity magazine ban 11% sales tax on all firearms and ammunition. Prohibit outdoor shooting of a firearm less than 5 acres. Lower the criminal penalties for robbery. Ban the arrest of illegal aliens in courthouses. Remove mandatory minimum sentences. Allow localities to install speed cameras and replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.

[Smuggler]

Can I just say, wow for all this like hand wringing that Democrats tried having a couple years ago. Cause it feels like they've kind of stopped trying to defend the whole thing of when they were accused of you want to bring in illegal aliens and you want to let them vote and that's how you guys want to win elections. They've pretty much stopped trying to even answer those accusations. When her first acts are ice. Our law enforcement isn't gonna cooperate with you. We're going to like make voting as wide open ballots after election day. Hand counting ballots is illegal vote voting on the Internet.

[Michael Duncan]

Did I read that's exactly what you said?

[Smuggler]

Like all of this Weaken Election laws and make it easier for illegal aliens to operate in Virginia. Those are the first orders of business.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, super brazen. Additionally, like on top of the ICE thing. ICE thing aside, you can't arrest an illegal immigrant at a courthouse. At the house of law. You can't arrest someone for violating the law.

[John Ashbrook]

What if they're convicted?

[Josh Holmes]

No, you can't.

[Smuggler]

This is a house of law. We don't allow laws in here.

[John Ashbrook]

You know, I've been listening to you guys lay out this case, very astutely, I might add. And I've thought to myself, where have I heard this before? Because it all sounds very familiar to me. And then I remembered 2020.

[Josh Holmes]

Yes.

[John Ashbrook]

When every single Democrat and every single member of the mainstream media assured us that Joe Biden would deliver a return to normalcy. Yes. This is a moderate man who is going to bring Washington back to its senses. And then the guy is sworn into office and he opens the border to every terrorist who can make it across on a boat. Democrats will do this time and time again. And if you're tricked by them a third time, who's the idiot?

[Josh Holmes]

A caretaker, they say.

[John Ashbrook]

Exactly.

[Josh Holmes]

Respected around the world, they claimed.

[John Ashbrook]

Right, Exactly. So, look, turn America to its place. I mean, it's all insane. Like, they do this every time. And then you got all these moderate voters out there who fall for it.

[Smuggler]

Yep. That's the thing is they have to. The radical left expresses such a minority view among Americans. Right. That they have to dupe voters. That's their whole game plan is. I mean, we saw the Abigail Spamberger ad. You're like, okay, Every line is about her telling me she's a moderate. Okay, she's a moderate. And as soon as she's in, it's like literally like the Mamdani wish list. Everything he would want for New York City.

[John Ashbrook]

Right.

[Smuggler]

She wants in place now for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. And everything she's talking about with illegal immigrants is stopping the ability of ICE to be able to deport terrorists. We talked to Tom Homan about this very specific issue. He said that they're still working on it and they'll still get around all of her efforts to stop them, but it makes it more difficult.

[Josh Holmes]

But so look, there is but one in John Fetterman, elected Democrat, that I'm aware of, where there is a dime worth of difference between Mayor Mamdani and their willingness to execute the furthest left reach of public policy in America. There's no. Not anybody who they'll tell you, oh, no, I reach consent. I'LL work across party lines. We don't want to be crazy about anything. This is about representing people until they have the governing power to do so. And then you get the Communist Manifesto banning gas powered leaf blowers. I mean, I didn't even know that was a thing.

[Smuggler]

And did you notice how many of those laws were directed at limiting the Second Amendment? Yeah, taxing the hell out.

[Josh Holmes]

A third of them were about the Second Amendment alone.

[Smuggler]

They're like, we wanna disarm Americans. We wanna empower illegals.

[Josh Holmes]

Yes.

[Smuggler]

And we wanna make elections as corrupt as possible.

[Michael Duncan]

Can you imagine the Star wars bar list of industry groups that had to come into the governor's? Man, make that list some of the biggest fucking losers in America.

[Josh Holmes]

Degenerates. Absolute degenerates. But look, we started this and you brought up that it was not just Abigail Spanberger, that wasn't Mom, Donnie, it's Abigail Spamberger. But it's also Mickey Sheryl, another voice of moderation, another rock solid center of the road just representing her constituency, point of view. Clip three, please. What did she had her first week, too?

[Brooke Rollins]

And yes, he has kept among us in times of peace standing armies without the consent of our legislatures. And this election proved that. The people of New Jersey recognize the parallels that we see. A president illegally usurping power, unconstitutionally enacting a tariff regime to make billions for himself and his family.

[Smuggler]

She's straight up comparing President Trump to King George being like, that's sedition. She is straight up calling to break away. I think he should give her her wish and send a standing army, should remove her from office, charge her with sedition. All of these people, Tim Waltz is the same. All these people who are essentially being like, this government is illegal. The one who won the popular vote, by the way, not just the electoral.

[Michael Duncan]

I think Trump should embrace it. You know, the King George comparison. I'd say this isn't about taxation without representation. It's about deportation without hesitation.

[Smuggler]

It's good. I'd buy that shirt.

[Josh Holmes]

It's good. But look, the larger point remains. You're gonna hear a lot of talk in a midterm where the odds are heavily weighed on the Democratic side. But they can't get elected in places like Minnesota or Michigan or Kentucky and even Maine or North Carolina or Georgia by saying what it is that they intend to do. But make no mistake, that's what they intend to do. If the people that they held out as the most moderate amongst them, and they almost expressed hesitation, by the way, it was like, well, it's a purple state. This is as good as we can do from a liberal perspective. Yeah, I understand they're not Mom, Donnie. But it's as good as we can get as Democrats and still win. And then they turn around and they show up with banning your leave or letting all the immigrants free, legal immigrants free, taxing the shit out of every single thing.

[John Ashbrook]

Right.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, and it makes me understand why so many people in the Republican base, you know, feel disappointed in the Republican Party because it's like if you're a liberal Democrat, what you end up with is always better than you could ever hope.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

You know, and on our side, well.

[Josh Holmes]

You'Ve been sold that you're not gonna get there. You can't get everything now. We're gonna get all of it. We're get all of it.

[Michael Duncan]

You know, with Republicans, you're always trying to hope that they live up to the promises of campaign, not that they're gonna do more than that.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

You know, they promise nothing and then deliver the Communist Manifesto.

[Michael Duncan]

Right, right.

[John Ashbrook]

I just wanna mention one other item from her list of horribles. We talked about the leaf blowers and the illegals and everything, but did you see the one where she's going to tax investments?

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

And so what she wants you to think is, oh, we're gonna go after the hedge funds.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

What that means is that if you've been saving for college just so that your kids can have a chance to get ahead, she's coming in to take that money too.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

You need to understand, Democrats will stop at nothing to bankrupt you.

[Smuggler]

And that's the thing is like, they tried to. This is asset confiscation.

[John Ashbrook]

That's what it is.

[Smuggler]

This is just stealing from Americans.

[John Ashbrook]

You've already paid taxes on money and that's. You're saving money to try to like pay tuition that's way too expensive.

[Smuggler]

And the fact that they're not trying to do this as like a income tax is because they want to be open to, to their left wing communist base. Let them know, no, we want to confiscate assets. They did it under the guys in California of like, this is just a billionaire tax. Because that's how it all starts. Notice that like, Bernie doesn't go after the millionaires anymore because he is a millionaire.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, right.

[Smuggler]

You know, and I mean, Ilhan Omar is a millionaire. They can't say we're going after the millionaires anymore. They have to trick you and be like, no, we're going after the billionaires now in Virginia, they're Like, we're just gonna straight up confiscate assets. Doesn't matter if you're a millionaire, billionaire, anybody. We're just gonna take your shit now.

[Josh Holmes]

It's all part of the ruse. I mean, remember what the whole argument was for Tim Walsh. He's a middle of the road. Sounds like one of us. He's a moderate member. He was a moderate. They tried to frame him as a moderate. Now, in the course of the campaign, the Trump administration, they did a great job of explaining to people that this guy was putting tampons in high school men's bathrooms.

[John Ashbrook]

But Democrats put a different image forward. Look at his camo hat. The guy coached football.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Smuggler]

One of you. He's going to run a pick six, right?

[Josh Holmes]

He's going to run a pick six.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. No, no, but.

[Josh Holmes]

But that's. So that's like what they're trying to do. It's absolutely no different than what they're trying to do in California. And the standard bearer out there in Swalwell, Clip four.

[Bassent]

They're going to lose their immunity.

[Josh Holmes]

He's talking about, I'm not going to.

[Brooke Rollins]

Be able to drive.

[Bassent]

I will take your driver's license. Good luck walking to work, assholes. Also, I will direct law enforcement to use every power to prosecute them for.

[Josh Holmes]

Battery, false imprisonment, and murder. Oh, he's talking about ice.

[Smuggler]

Insane.

[Michael Duncan]

So driver's license for illegal immigrants. Yes, that's fine.

[Josh Holmes]

We're good with that.

[Michael Duncan]

Driver's licenses for law enforcement.

[Josh Holmes]

For federal law enforcement.

[Smuggler]

No, no.

[Michael Duncan]

Awesome.

[Josh Holmes]

In prosecution, it's like if you live.

[Michael Duncan]

In California, you live in the Upside Down. It's incredible.

[Josh Holmes]

Like, I don't understand. You don't need a partisan argument. Like, that's what he's for. There are existing laws on the books of what constitutes something that's illegal and something's illegal. What he wants you to think is that we prosecute things that are legal and we don't prosecute things that are illegal. And my entirety of my approach to this is throwing law enforcement in prison or taking their driver's license or otherwise harming them in some way for enforcing federal statutes that I, as a Congressman, have presided over for 10 years and done nothing about. Right. There's never been a Democratic effort to decriminalize on a federal level entering this country illegally. I wonder why. I wonder why. It's because they don't want that hanging over their head. Nobody agrees with that, so they don't talk about it. But when they're in charge, they'll do something about it, the laws don't matter. Like nothing matters. It's all about just selling you the voter is some kind of a puppy dogs and apple pie in order to give them the power that they have. So they'll just like break the law and do whatever that. Look at Minnesota. Look what's happening. That is the vision for the entirety of the Democratic slate in these midterms. And I just need you to think through that because most of you are listening. You're like, yeah, I got it. We already know that. Well your neighbors don't.

[Smuggler]

Your neighbors don't.

[Josh Holmes]

They don't. And you gotta figure out a way to talk to them about all of that.

[Smuggler]

And now.

[Josh Holmes]

And now. And now. So listen, we're gonna get Tom Homan and our question of the day that pertains to exactly the this very point. But I do have to remind all of you, we're gonna do a live show. It's gonna be in Philadelphia and it's celebrating this great country of ours in America. 250 we're kicking it off in January. Cause we wanna do 12 full months of this bad boy. And it's gonna be on January 29th. The doors open at 6pm Downtown Philadelphia. When you RSVP, they'll give you the site. And remember food and beverage are included in all of this.

[Smuggler]

I mean that's the total package. We're gonna sing and dance. You get food and drink.

[Josh Holmes]

It's free. It's free folks. Free show from the Ruthless variety.

[Michael Duncan]

Gotta make sure we pack our Zbiotics.

[Smuggler]

100 you know that.

[Josh Holmes]

100 so if you go to a250philly.com ruthless you can get your ticket and you'll get the venue location. January 29th. Doors open at 6. And it's brought to you in partnership with our good friends at America for Prosperity. And I, I'll just say like I'm super pumped about this. It's our first live show in a long time and this is gonna be a banger. So you know, coming up we've got Tom Holman and then we'll get your question of the day. We're gonna play some games. We're gonna do a lot of stuff here today right after this.

[Guest/Announcer]

In America, parents call the shots for their families, not bureaucrats. But the so called App Store Accountability act puts your child at risk.

[Josh Holmes]

This bill requires App Stores to collect.

[Guest/Announcer]

Children'S sensitive personal data while taking away.

[John Ashbrook]

Power from parents over how their child's.

[Guest/Announcer]

Data is handled by tech companies. Parents should get to decide if their child's age is shared with apps, not politicians. Parents should attest to their kids ages, not turn over birth certificates to tech companies. Congress don't put kids at greater risk.

[John Ashbrook]

Online and box parents out of making.

[Guest/Announcer]

Decisions for their families. Tell your lawmaker to put parents first.

[Josh Holmes]

There are better ways to keep kids safe. NetChoice is dedicated to making the Internet.

[John Ashbrook]

Safe for free expression and free enterprise.

[Guest/Announcer]

Learn [e-mail] keepappstores safe.

[John Ashbrook]

I want to welcome to the Ruthless Variety program a man who needs no introduction, but he is our border czar, Tom Homan. Mr. Homan, thank you so much for being with us today.

[Tom Homan]

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

[John Ashbrook]

I want to start our interview with a little bit of a higher level question. Because you have such a long career in law enforcement and border enforcement, you've been decorated by multiple administrations, including the Obama administration, and you've seen it all. And I just wonder, there seems to have been a shift in this country where 10, 20 years ago, the news media was writing about ICE and saying, oh, look at, look at the law enforcement they're carrying out. They're writing about border Democrats are talking about border security like it's a problem that needs to be solved. And at some point in the last 10 or 20 years, all of that shifted and it became such a partisan an issue. I wonder if, just thinking back, if you noticed something from the inside, from a professional's perspective, when that actually started to turn, because it's very upsetting to a lot of Americans who are concerned with safety.

[Tom Homan]

I think it started under the first Trump administration. As you said earlier, President Obama awarded me the presidential rank award, which is the highest award available because I deported over 400,000 people. Everybody thought that was great. Now, the second, the second four years of Obama administration, we did a complete opposite. We pretty much got shut down. I think after he got the deporter in chief nickname, they started shutting us down. But President Trump came in and said, no, we're going to force a law. We're going to enforce laws on the books. While apology, I think the rhetoric is really hateful now because the American public is used to four years of no immigration enforcement, open border, millions of people walking across the border, and ice, they weren't arresting anybody. Hardly. ICE was told, you can't arrest somebody for simply being in the country illegally. They gotta be convicted of a serious crime before you can even target them for arrest. So now that President Trump's back and ISIS doing the same thing they've done for 40 years, people are shot and plus, I think a lot of it has to do. It's all politics. They hate Trump. They don't want to give Trump a win. Well, he's winning every day. We got the most secure border in history in the nation. They don't like that because we're proving every day that the last administration lied to the American people. I also think the politicians are angry because we're ruining their plans. Their plans were to bring millions of people in the country, hoping they'd be future Democratic voters. Remember Biden also overturned the Trump census rule with millions of people will be counted in that census which will result in more seats in House for the Dems. We're slowly tearing down their long term strategy and they're upset about it. What a lot has to do. They simply hate Trump. They hate Trump more than they care about the safety of their community.

[John Ashbrook]

In obvious, obviously a lot of their politicians on the left are working to try to slow down the law enforcement. Everybody's familiar with the governor of Minnesota, but the governor of Virginia, brand new Democrat, just sworn into office. One of her first actions was to say that, no, we are not going to cooperate with ice. We're not going to cooperate with federal officials in their mission to try to keep America safe and deport these criminals who are over here. And I just wonder if there's a way. I'm sure you're familiar with what Virginia.

[Tom Homan]

Well, look, I am a resident of Virginia. Spanberger. I remember campaign ads. I'm a law enforcement officer. I've rescued children from sex trafficking. I've seen the commercials. So first day in office, she stopped being a law enforcement officer and became a politician. Because where's all that, all those commercials you did about wanting to support law enforcement and rescuing kids, What ICE is doing right now? First of all, this administration, we already found 130,000 of those missing kids the last administration wasn't even looking for. Many of these children were victims of sex trafficking and forced labor. We're tearing apart these trafficking rings. We're looking for these missing children. We're arresting criminal aliens. Many of them, like just the last two weeks of Minnesota, a lot of them are sexual predators of children, child rape. Where has she gone? I mean, she's a different person than what she ran on. Just a different person. Look, I respect her service to this nation. I think she forgot it though, real quickly. With supreme governor, I hope we can work together, but it doesn't look good.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, so if you're a resident of Virginia, you're also a resident of The United States. And you're hoping that your federal government will keep you safe from illegal alien criminals. Are there ways that, that you can work around her intransigence? I mean, other strategies we're working on.

[Tom Homan]

Like she's, we're working around that in New York and you know, California and Oregon and Illinois. These states are not friendly. They won't work with ice. So it just means we got to send more resources to those states because it makes your job harder if they work with us. I mean, one agent can arrest one illegal alien in a county jail. We just give us access to the person that you locked in a jail cell and they're in the country legally. When you're done, they're giving to us. That's the most efficient way to do it. But when you knowingly going to release public safety threats in the community? Now we've got to send the whole team out looking for them. I said it from day one. The thousands of agents were bringing on. We're going to flood sanctuary cities. We have to. Because you created a problem where you're releasing public safety threats in the street. We know you got a problem there. We know that rather than one agent wrestling one bad guy, now we got to send a whole team out looking for a lot of guys. So unfortunately they set the stage and we're going to do what we got to do. They're not going to stop us. They can stand on the sidelines and watch. Shame on them. But they're not going to stop us from doing this mission.

[John Ashbrook]

So the sanctuary cities obviously exist. Everybody knows where they are, including the bad guys. One of the pictures that people saw during the Biden administration that was so concerning were thousands of military age men from the other hemisphere crossing over our southern border and going who knows where in this country. Is it possible that, that some of these bad guys see the sanctuary cities as a rendezvous point where they can reform terror cells inside of this country?

[Tom Homan]

Absolutely. They know they're protected even in the country illegally. They know even if they commit a crime in that city. No one's calling ice. No, that's why these sanctuary cities, look, that's by design. You know, they knew most of these illegal aliens go to sanctuary cities. And again, get back to the census. Sanctuary seat is run by Democrats Democratic neighborhood. Right. So it'll result in more seats in oscillate Dems. This is about they sold this nation out. They sold our national security out for future political power. But look, we know we got just under Joe Biden 2.1 million known gotaways. 2.1 million people paid more to the cartel to get away. You pay one amount, get to the border, see a green uniform, turn yourself in, you get released within 24 hours. You get a free airline ticket to the city of your choice. You get a free hotel room, you get three meals a day. You get free medical care in about 90, 120 days, we won't give you a work authorization. Why did 2.1 million people pay more not to take advantage of that giveaway program? Well, simple. They didn't want to be vetted. They want to be fingerprinted. God help us. I'm grateful President Trump's in the Oval Office because, you know, there's certainly people from terrorist sponsored countries here planning some sort of dirty deed. But, you know, the FBI has already arrested a lot of them. You know, got Tulsi Gabbard and Pam Bondi and Cash Patel, and we got a lot of great people working on this from an intelligence perspective. But they put us in a really bad position. Our national security is at risk. But I know when President Trump secured that border, secure border means you got stronger national security because of what ISIS doing. We got stronger national security, so we got to try to stay one step ahead of them.

[John Ashbrook]

So you think it's fair to say that sanctuary cities are the most dangerous cities to live in in our country?

[Tom Homan]

Absolutely, yes.

[John Ashbrook]

And I know you guys are working overtime to deport the criminals, deport people. But I remember the statistic from the Obama era that he deported 3 million people during his eight years in office. Do you think President Trump will eclipse that number? If you count all eight of his.

[Tom Homan]

Years, even those sanctuary cities are standing in the way. We're going to do as much as we can. There are more sanctuary cities now than ever, and they just make it less efficient. Like I said a minute ago, during Obama administration, we had, you know, we had less sanctuary cities. We had administration willing to get us into the jail, honor our detainers. And now operations are much less efficient, but we have more resources. Plus, we got a record number of 287 programs now. So we'll overcome this. But it's unfortunate because it makes the community less safe. When you release public safety threats in the community, makes it certain that's safe for our agents. And on top of that, you got, for instance, Minnesota. They've been empowered to go out there and interfere and impede ice, make the job more difficult. Think about that. You got a US Citizen protest. I don't think they know what the Hell, they protest if you ask them. I think a lot of them are paid. You are standing between this arrest team and they're targeting a child rapist and you want to impede them, interfere with them. Go to the website and look how many criminal aliens in child sex predators have been taken on the street. It's incredible. If you want to protest what ICE is doing, then protest Capitol Hill. So we're enforcing laws that they enacted. We're not making this stuff up. If we don't like the immigration law, go protest. Congress don't protest the men and women who put their lives on line for this country. They try to make their community safer.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, Mr. Homan, thanks for everything you're doing keeping us all safe. Really wish you the best of luck and appreciate you being on the roof.

[Tom Homan]

We got it, man. Thank you. Appreciate it.

[John Ashbrook]

Fellas. I think it's always interesting to talk to an issue area expert, and this happens to be a guy who's worked in law enforcement since the early 80s and what he has to say about sanctuary cities and, you know, acknowledge that they could be a possible rendezvous point for terrorists who entered the country during Joe Biden's administration. He talked about sanctuary cities as the most dangerous places to live in America. He talked about Virginia. Very special opportunity to have Homan on the show.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, people forget he was there during Obama.

[John Ashbrook]

Obama put a medal around his neck.

[Bassent]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

And who would have thunk it, you know, that maybe places where people don't enforce the law are magnets for people who want to break the law. Weird, you know, huh?

[Josh Holmes]

Strange.

[Michael Duncan]

It is strange.

[Josh Holmes]

Strange. You mean it's not just the waitress that's in jeopardy here, that there's Tajikistan terrorists.

[John Ashbrook]

He's fighting age Uzbek.

[Smuggler]

That's right.

[John Ashbrook]

One other thing I want to point out about that interview. I don't know if you guys noticed, but we were set up knee to knee.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Smuggler]

Yes.

[John Ashbrook]

And we always promised everybody in the audience that we'd never do that to you, which is why you did it. Come up with a more creative way to do it. And the camera guy won't say his name because he is a professional who's been in the business for a very long time. He was like, john, John, let me give you a better shot than this. I have something with a little more creativity than just the knee to D. I was like, no, no, no. I want to do knee to knee simply so that my friends can laugh at me.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, I mean, I thought it was natural because Ashbrook has always wanted to be A journo, you know. That's good.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

The only knee to knee you'll see here on the program is from our friend Jeremy, the master of the knee to knee. So that leads to our question of the day up from the first segment, which is, what is the best way to help voters understand there's no such thing as a moderate Democrat?

[Michael Duncan]

Yep.

[Josh Holmes]

You guys have to give us ideas on this. I mean, look, we'll keep beating the drum, and if everybody listened to the Ruthless Variety Program, I don't think we'd have this problem.

[Smuggler]

Can I be honest? I think this is the most important question that Republicans should be thinking about right now. And now's the time to find the answer to this and get it out there. Now's the time.

[Josh Holmes]

If you answer these questions, you will reverse history and win the midterms.

[Smuggler]

That's it.

[Josh Holmes]

That's just a bottom line. Because if an election at this point is not a referendum against the unknown, but a choice between what it is that you've got and the list that we read that Bret Baier read out, I think I know where we're coming down on that. Right. So it's up to us, all of us and those of you listening care about the direction of your country to try to explain to people who might be confused about all of this. They don't like tone or they don't like Greenland. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. But the option here is a crazy place in a country that would be unrecognizable as a result of these people getting elected. So that's our question of the day. When you like and subscribe to the Ruthless Variety Program, we read all of your comments, and we're gonna learn a lot from all that. So remember, like, subscribe, give us your comment. We'll read it. And get back to the very next episode on Fontaine Frady. So when we come back, we're gonna get to your comments from last episode from. It was about Don Lamone. What a piece of work. We asked what should be the consequences for Don Lamond after he stormed the church with a bunch of left wingers. I feel like he's getting into the soup now, but you have your ideas right after this. Okay, so when you like and subscribe to the Ruthless Variety program and leave your answers for the question of the day, we read them all. And this question was, what be the consequences for Don Lamone after he, you know, figured out how to storm a church with a bunch of psycho activists to do that? We always start with a voice.

[John Ashbrook]

Okay, first one comes from Lori Vaught. Or vote. She writes, don Lemon or Lemon should be placed in solitary confinement. And Donald Trump's rally speeches should be played loudly on loop.

[Smuggler]

I think we got a winner.

[Josh Holmes]

That's really.

[Smuggler]

I mean, that's exactly right, Laurie.

[Josh Holmes]

That is.

[Michael Duncan]

I just, I'm envisioning that scene from Clockwork Orange where they open the guy's.

[Josh Holmes]

Eyes, he's like, all right, Heronx, what do you got in common, too?

[Michael Duncan]

This is from Tina Moreno. Tina writes, make Don Lamond sit through an entire three year of three hour sermons in the front pew. No phone, no mic, no exit. Just pure, uninterrupted conviction.

[Smuggler]

Maybe he'll learn something.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, wouldn't that be nice?

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, he's a Christian. He explained to the pastor.

[Smuggler]

Yeah, that was one of the most infuriating lines. Like, okay, you're going to tell this pastor, that would be great if a.

[Michael Duncan]

Judge gave him community service, but community.

[John Ashbrook]

Service was at church.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. First pew.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, it would be fantastic. All right, Comment three.

[Smuggler]

Smug comment three is from Alvin Sell. Alvin writes, what do I think should happen to mobs who invade churches? I'd like to see a reenactment of the scene from A Bronx Tale where someone locks the door and says now yous Can't Leave.

[Michael Duncan]

It's a great scene.

[Smuggler]

That is a good scene.

[Josh Holmes]

One of my absolute favorites. Yeah, that's so good. All right, so great comments there. Next, we're coming up on a lightning round. There's a lot to get through the President's Abroad at Davos. We're gonna do a quick recap on that, some news and information and some yucks that I think you can use right after this.

[John Ashbrook]

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[Josh Holmes]

Okay, so it's worth noting at the front, you've probably all seen the coverage of Trump abroad at the Davos Douchebag Summit that annually happens, where a bunch of people sniff their own farts and tell everybody else how smart they are. Trump drops in and he just owns the joint, which is just a very predictable deal. But going into it, he previewed a whole bunch of things about Greenland. And, like, the American people were like, ah, we did the Venezuela thing. Like, we understand we're kind of with you on the Greenland thing, but, like, what's going on with all this? Threaten big tariffs on Europe or whatever else. He's there for like four hours and all of a sudden you get the NATO Secretary General who's like, hey, let's work out the thing on Greenland. Well, Trump announces, I think we worked the thing out on Greenland. Details to come. But, like.

[Smuggler]

I mean, making moves, man.

[Josh Holmes]

I know, right? So, you know, it is what it is. This whole thing starts with Macron of France coming, giving his full presentation. This is before President Trump arrived. And he's got these sunglasses on. Everybody's like, what's up with that? Apparently a nine procedure or something. It wasn't really fully disclosed. There was a lot of speculation about that while President Trump was amongst those speculating on this. Clip 7 Emmanuel Macron.

[Guest/Announcer]

I watched him yesterday with those beautiful sunglasses.

[Tom Homan]

What the hell happened?

[Smuggler]

I mean, that's happening at Davos.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

So put up the graphic one. This is what he looked like. I mean, it was like he was trying to do a Top Gun thing as a leader.

[Smuggler]

Who does this guy think he is?

[Josh Holmes]

You gotta explain it before you show up.

[Smuggler]

I mean, who does he think he is?

[John Ashbrook]

He thinks he's smug.

[Smuggler]

That's what he is. He's trying to do that. And I appreciate President Trump holding him accountable on that.

[Josh Holmes]

I will say. So. I was on, on Tuesday night, right after this on Bret Baer, and one of the producers said to me, josh, I noticed you were noticeably quiet about Macron and somebody being affiliated with you wearing sunglasses all the time.

[Smuggler]

That's the thing is, like, there's only one person who wears a number 23 jersey.

[Josh Holmes]

George.

[Smuggler]

Who does Macron think he is?

[Josh Holmes]

Who is he trying to steal?

[Smuggler]

Your bit hilarious.

[Josh Holmes]

And he's not even blind.

[Smuggler]

And Trump, Trump going in on that was Perfect. Dude at Davos, they're all laughing at Macron. Think about that.

[Michael Duncan]

That's fun to be humiliating for him.

[Smuggler]

I mean, the French are used to that kind of thing.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, you can't love that. Especially after the texts where he was like, hey, can I take you to dinner? Maybe we can work something out on the Greenland thing. And he's like, yep, post it.

[Smuggler]

Screenshot.

[Josh Holmes]

He's just there dominating. Anyway, Trump's not done. Clip 8,650 billion.

[Tom Homan]

I mean, it's so many.

[Guest/Announcer]

One just announced 10 billion. Toyota met Mr. Toyota in Japan.

[Tom Homan]

So what's your name?

[Guest/Announcer]

Toyota.

[Tom Homan]

I said, oh, do you own the car company? Yes, 92%.

[Guest/Announcer]

I said, you didn't have to be that specific. I said, you're rich.

[Tom Homan]

Yes, yes, I rich.

[Josh Holmes]

But he's.

[Guest/Announcer]

He just announced he's going to do.

[Josh Holmes]

$10 billion worth of plants.

[Tom Homan]

I mean, it's amazing what's going on. It's amazing. We've never had anything like it.

[Smuggler]

I mean, he's great as president, but he has to be the best person to hang out with. Dude, if you could just have that doing the Asian.

[Josh Holmes]

The Asian dialect while he's explaining Mr. Toyota.

[Michael Duncan]

I love that he made fun of him for specifying he owns 92%.

[Smuggler]

You don't be that specific.

[Michael Duncan]

All right, all right.

[Josh Holmes]

I wrench. I mean, you can't get enough of it. I mean, that's just like the tip of the iceberg. There's an awful lot more on that, but we'd have to have like, 17 shows to get to all of it. Besant, I thought, did typically the best job at laying out a whole range of issues in international economics and how it relates to our domestic policy and how we're dealing with trade partners. Clipnight.

[Bassent]

And just to be clear that we have Europe buying Russian oil still. Still four years later, they are financing the war against themselves.

[Smuggler]

Yep, that's it.

[Josh Holmes]

So, I mean, you could have listened to that whole thing with Maria Bartiromo, and it was just like lesson after lesson after lesson. But this is a point I think, Duncan, you made is that we don't talk about this enough.

[Michael Duncan]

We don't. We don't. And it's something that you learn in campaigns. You know, the 10th time you say something is the first time somebody's heard it. And it can be annoying to have to repeat yourself that much. But, like, we do not talk enough about this. Like, we are, oh, well, whose feelings did Donald Trump hurt in Europe? And it's like, these idiots are still buying Russian oil.

[Josh Holmes]

Right.

[Michael Duncan]

When he went there years ago and was like, you're gonna be relying on this, they all laughed in his face, right? So like, why do we have to care about their fucking feelings? These people are idiots, dude.

[Smuggler]

That's the thing is like last time when Trump's first term, he went to Davos and he was like, you idiots realize that all this hippie bullshit environmentalism you're doing is just making your countries completely reliant on Russian oil, on people.

[Josh Holmes]

You say are your enemies.

[Smuggler]

Yeah. And they were all like laughing. They're like, oh yeah, you don't understand science. And then Joe Biden gets into office and then Russia invades Ukraine and they're like, oh shit, we're all addicted to Russian oil. Guess we can't do anything about that.

[Josh Holmes]

So Bessen simply reminds them that they financed the war against themselves. They care deeply about Ukraine. And the only reason that that's going on is because their countries were entirely reliant on Russian oil and financing. The kind of thing like you need to repeat these things. People miss the forest through the trees. But he did a nice job on that. I also thought he did a real nice job on Gavin Newsom. Let's get to that clip.

[Bassent]

I think it's very, very ironic that you know, Governor Newsom, who strikes me as Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken, may be the only Californian who knows less about economics than Kamala Harris. Oh my God, he's here this week. His billionaire sugar daddy, Alex Soros.

[Josh Holmes]

Get his ass.

[Bassent]

Davos is a perfect place for a man who, when everyone else was on lockdown, when he was having people arrested for going to church, he was having thousand dollar a night meals at the French Laundry. And I'm sure the California people won't forget that. And my message to Governor Newsom is the Trump administration is coming to California. We are going to crack down on waste, fraud and abuse. And I was told he was asked to give a speech on his signature policies, but he's not speaking because what have his economic policies brought? Outward migration from California, a gigantic budget deficit, the largest homeless population in America, and the poor folks in the Palisades who had their homes burned down. He is here hobnobbing with the global elite while his California citizens are still homeless. Shame on him. He is too smug, too self absorbed, and too economically illiterate to know anything.

[Josh Holmes]

Thank you very much.

[Bassent]

Let me know if you need any further clarify. Dude, dude.

[John Ashbrook]

That was legendary.

[Smuggler]

To drop that off the top of your head. Cause that's not a speech no, he's an answer to a question.

[Michael Duncan]

You know, Patrick Bateman hurt, but, like, then, calling him also Sparkle Beach Ken. God, roast his ass.

[Josh Holmes]

It was like a Billy Madison. We're all dumber now.

[Guest/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, what a wild takedown. That's impressive, but perfect on all accounts. That is exactly what he is. That's the argument against Gavin Newsom. He distilled it down. Was it 45 seconds.

[Smuggler]

Just nailed him.

[Josh Holmes]

That's it. That's it. I hope. I think we're going to catch up with him next week. We've been waiting to do this for a while, and Bassent's one of our favorite, not only because he understands all of this stuff, but his way of articulation. The guy takes no prisoners, none literally.

[Smuggler]

There's no time for it.

[Josh Holmes]

And he kicks the shit out of people if they're not, like, physically.

[Smuggler]

He will if need be. And they know it.

[Josh Holmes]

And they know it. All right, so listen, it's Thursday, and when it's Thursday, we always like to play our signature game here on the ruthless Friday program, King of the Hill. A game that I have been dominating to a point where it's almost humiliating to all of my competitors. At this point, I have Steve Schmidt again, the reigning champion for what seems like.

[Smuggler]

I think it was week five.

[Josh Holmes]

It's been a lot.

[Smuggler]

We used to have a rule on the books, three weeks, and then you got to retire the champ. So, I mean, that's something to revisit.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, maybe you can.

[Smuggler]

Who's the chelcher?

[Michael Duncan]

It feels rigged, but anyway, I'll bring it. Anyway, I'm bringing in Rick Wilson.

[John Ashbrook]

Okay.

[Bassent]

Yeah.

[Smuggler]

And the judge is Ashbrook, and I am your bailiff. I'm gonna run a tight court, as always.

[Michael Duncan]

Let's go ringside.

[John Ashbrook]

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. It's time for King of the Hill. In the red corner, fighting formally from the Daily Beast, Rick Wilson. And now in the blue corner, fighting from his back porch in Utah, and Kirk Champion of the world, the old fat man, Steve Shamet.

[Smuggler]

That's the most brutal nickname of all, dude. It really is. Not just the words, but the way he just rolls it. I think he serves that up the hardest.

[Josh Holmes]

Humiliating old fat man.

[Michael Duncan]

Just.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, he deserves an extra panache after the heater that he's been on, frankly. I'm gonna start with exhibit four, if you don't mind. Americans are fed up with what's happening on our streets. That's why the warning Fuck ice collection has been so popular. Now, in addition to the hats and tees. You can get lawn signs, mugs, and beer pints and tote bags. Check out the full collection here. And a link to a bunch of.

[Michael Duncan]

Merch that says fuck ice.

[John Ashbrook]

Wow.

[Josh Holmes]

This is one of the gentlemen who has been most successful at monetizing partisanship over the last 20 years. He doesn't fake it. It's like, hey, I understand you're angry about something now. I believe in that, too, and I'm gonna sell you some merch.

[Smuggler]

Like, there's. If there's a way to get a. Get a dime out of it. This guy is willing to lower himself to Remember when he was selling, like, PS5.

[John Ashbrook]

Yes.

[Smuggler]

And people are like, what are you doing here? Just finding a way to make a.

[Josh Holmes]

Buck for a lib. He's got quite a capitalist spirit.

[Smuggler]

Right?

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

Okay, Challenger, I'd like to do Exhibit number 16, please. This is Rick Wilson's laundry list here. This is from his Friday brief. I assume that's some sort of newsletter thing he does on substack. Yeah, the. The name of the URL is Against all enemies Dot net. Maybe he couldn't maybe afford the dot.

[Josh Holmes]

Com spring for the comm. Yeah, yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

Which is just a little color. Here's the list. In his Friday brief. Inside, Trump isn't kidding about canceling elections. The fresh hell that awaits the Nazification of DC Nazification.

[Josh Holmes]

This is my favorite part.

[Michael Duncan]

We can be heroes. Just throw that in there. Venezuela and Big Oil. I thought we settled the Syrian war. Ejectic AI And China. China won the trade war. The Nobel goes to Profiles in Degeneracy, Iran and Starlink. A lot of topics in his brief.

[Josh Holmes]

That is a lot.

[Smuggler]

And it's also interesting. This matchup is both Lincoln Project alumni.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Smuggler]

Going head to head.

[Michael Duncan]

I just think my favorite part in this, other than the URL, being net, which is very funny. I mean, like, you've only been in this grift for a fucking decade. You think you could figure out the domain you're going to use and maybe buy the dot com. But the other part is the hard pivot from the Nazification of DC to we can be heroes.

[Smuggler]

That is funny.

[Josh Holmes]

It'll lighten it up halfway.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, you. You sold that very, very well. Thank you. And the.net is a nice flourish that only you could point out and deliver exquisitely. As you did, however. Oh, come on. First round goes to Steve.

[Michael Duncan]

That's just insane.

[Josh Holmes]

Simply, you can't win in this rigged court.

[John Ashbrook]

Simply be ridiculous.

[Josh Holmes]

How dare you.

[John Ashbrook]

He's just selling you stemware. That says, fuck.

[Michael Duncan]

He's been selling shit for 10 years. This is warmed over crap.

[Smuggler]

Well, I sympathize. We have to move on.

[Michael Duncan]

Unbelievable.

[Smuggler]

Round two starts.

[Michael Duncan]

All right, I play nothing. I play nothing because I can't win. That's just ridiculous. I hope everybody, everybody who's on X, I want you to send a message to John Ashbrook tomorrow about how crooked his court is.

[Josh Holmes]

That was a weak take. That was overwhelmed by stemware.

[Smuggler]

We'll need some order in this court, please.

[Michael Duncan]

I don't care. This whole court's out of order.

[Josh Holmes]

That's just outrageous.

[Michael Duncan]

Okay, exhibit number nine. I don't care. I'll pick whatever. Trump's new gigantic temper tantrum over Norway is deep into 25th Amendment territory. Hell, at this point. 25th Amendment Terry is far in the rear view mirror and we are descending further into madness by the moment. So we're beyond removing the President from office.

[Smuggler]

This is always the most ridiculous coming from libs. After we went through four years of Joe Biden and at the end they couldn't hide it anymore to the point that he had to just drop out. And now they're trying to be like Trump. The guy who's just like dropping these banger speeches off the top of his head in press conferences needs to be 25th amendment. It's incredible. The brazenness.

[Josh Holmes]

The brazenness. Ready?

[Michael Duncan]

Another merch drop.

[Josh Holmes]

Exhibit 3. Ford employee TJ Stuff was suspended earlier this week for calling Trump a pedophile protector. The vile no class president responded with a fuck you and a middle finger. Remind him and his MAGA minions of exactly who he is with these items. And it's a mug, a T shirt, another T shirt. Pedophile protector. Right there with these items. Just with these items. More items.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, I can overlook an outburst, but I cannot overlook a one sided game like that.

[Smuggler]

Incredible.

[Michael Duncan]

Smith wins rounds. Ridiculously rigged. Just ridiculously rigged. He's the first one to come up with selling merch, guys. He wins.

[Josh Holmes]

Do you want to know what my third play was?

[Michael Duncan]

More merch.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

This is exhibit two. The majority of Americans oppose taking over Greenland. Within even greater opposition to taking it over by military force. Make your opinions known with this just launch leave Greenland alone merch.

[Smuggler]

Incredible. This guy's just like, okay, so that's.

[Josh Holmes]

Anything you can talk about in the course of a week he's slapped on the side of stemware.

[Michael Duncan]

I can understand it, winning one round.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

You know, but like at some point it's warmed over here.

[Smuggler]

I think that's like six weeks now. For Schmidt.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Smuggler]

I'm gonna be judged next week. I'm gonna make sure the court is fully aware going into it. He's retired.

[Michael Duncan]

Ian Ashbrook can't be judge ever.

[Smuggler]

Yeah, I agree.

[Josh Holmes]

That is outrageous.

[Smuggler]

You've had three times. We've had it.

[Josh Holmes]

As a rule, I am not allowed.

[Smuggler]

A couple times the collusion. No, three times, two. Like that's a bit much.

[Josh Holmes]

I'm just simply not judging him.

[Michael Duncan]

I'm judging next week.

[Smuggler]

And if anyone brings Steve Schmidt, I'm gonna rule against him every time. I think our audience deserves better.

[Josh Holmes]

You've heard it here directly.

[Smuggler]

No laziness. We should always bring our A game.

[Guest/Announcer]

What?

[Smuggler]

The incoming promise to our audience has always been we bring our best and integrity.

[Michael Duncan]

Integrity.

[Smuggler]

And we're not going to be lazy with more Steve Schmidt slides.

[Josh Holmes]

This judge has prejudged.

[Smuggler]

That's right.

[Josh Holmes]

By disqualifying a reigning champion before he's ever even allowed to submit a single submission.

[Smuggler]

And if anyone brings Steve Schmidt next week, I'm going to just call it the second they say Steve Schmidt every round.

[Michael Duncan]

Thank you for the courage to disassemble this kangaroo court.

[Smuggler]

That's right.

[Josh Holmes]

That's right. Well, I'm going to appeal it. I will tell you. I'm going to appeal it right off the top.

[Michael Duncan]

To what judge?

[John Ashbrook]

That's the Supreme Court sitting at the end of the table.

[Michael Duncan]

Okay.

[Josh Holmes]

All right. Well, thanks for another victory here on King of the Hill. We've got to get to a great interview. This is our Secretary of Agriculture, lovely lady who's doing a hell of a job.

[John Ashbrook]

Brooke Rollins.

[Josh Holmes]

Very excited about this interview. We've been waiting to talk to her for a long time because she's doing an awful lot of great work on behalf of America's farmers. We have really all Americans, if you think about her line of work. The Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins. How are you?

[Brooke Rollins]

Oh, I'm so good. It's so great to be here. Thank you. A big fan of the show.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, that's awesome.

[Brooke Rollins]

Big fan. So it's an honor to be.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, it's very. It's great to have you. I mean, listen, it turns out as we were talking before we started taping here, these roles are pretty all encompassing.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

And this president in particular has you doing a lot of stuff. You're doing everything from rearranging how Americans see the value of what they put in their bodies on a day to day basis to making sure our farmers are taken care of and that we continue to lead the world in food production. And that's really a national security issue as well as a domestic issue. I mean, all these things. So, you know, a year in. Give us a year in review. How you feeling?

[Brooke Rollins]

Yeah, listen, I just could not be more proud of our president and the opportunity, really, the aperture that I think he opened for all of us in the Cabinet and what we had been working toward and thinking about and how we execute on saving the country. I mean, that's really the big picture, what we do to take it back to our founding father's vision of self governance. And I was not expecting to be the Secretary of Agriculture. I very happily was, you know, building and running a policy think tank based on America first policies and had been working alongside the President, though, for a number of years, including in the first term.

[John Ashbrook]

So.

[Brooke Rollins]

But we had been really preparing for the moment, whether it was with President Trump or a future White House, where for the first time we would be ready as conservatives to govern. Right, the left is really good at government. The right is really good at building business and philanthropies and raising families and building churches. And so from my perspective, the opportunity to prepare and be ready. And we got that opportunity. Now, to your question, did I ever see myself as Secretary of Agriculture as part of that opportunity? I did not. But, you know, sometimes God and Donald Trump have other plans for you than you have for yourself. But one year in, what an honor. What a blessing. My whole background was rural America, but for years I had sort of run bigger policy operations. From my perspective, 24 new trade deals, opening up the markets around the world, realigning the American farmer and producer and putting them first in world negotiations and working to solve so much of what Joe Biden had really screwed up. Cost of inputs, bringing those down, inflation, you know, all of the above, from my perspective, we have to preserve rural America, the American farmer, we have to be able to feed ourselves. We have to get healthy again. And at the center of all of that is our. Is our farmer. Having said that, the bigger picture in terms of saving the country and one year in and what that looks like from my perspective, 2025 will go down as one of the most consequential years in American history for all of the decisions that were made and the things that were done on the world stage at the border with prices, reviving the American dream. But 2026, I believe, will go down in the history books as the year all of that was effectuated, where the American dream really, really begin to thrive again. And especially for those at the margins.

[Josh Holmes]

Because people can see the work product.

[Brooke Rollins]

Exactly. Tax cuts into effect, costs really coming down across the board. I mean, all of the above. Deporting all of those who should not be here so we can really focus on our own country housing becoming affordable again. All of that we're going to now begin to see in 2026.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Because it's, look, it's a tricky job in a lot of ways. And we're the breadbasket of the world in a lot of ways. And our farmers not only provide us a safe quality, best quality in the world, affordable food for all of us, but to much of the world as well. And so when you start talking about global trade, there's a lot of people in your constituency that you oversee, they start to get nervous about. We start talking about tariffs. President's got a grander vision of trying to get a better deal for all kinds of different industries across this country. And that includes getting into a negotiation. And immediately, I know in your neck of the words, we all come from foreign country. Everybody gets a little nervous about that.

[John Ashbrook]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

Because we export food better than anybody. And your job, as best I can tell, has been talking to all those folks to ensure that we balance this. All right. And it appears to me all of the sort of whistleblowing and concern and anger at the outset that was sort of amplified by Democrats around Washington, D.C. you guys have kind of had a finger on and been able to deal with all of this ahead of whatever sort of market condition that people are feeling.

[Brooke Rollins]

Yeah, I think that's so well said. And the reason is this. The president has never shied away from his use of tariffs. His. He's been writing books about this for 30 or 40 years. But when we had what we called Liberation Day, and I may have talked to y', all, you guys may have been there that day where the President.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, Smash with.

[Brooke Rollins]

Where the president announced to the world that instead of one country or two countries, he was completely resetting the entire world economy.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Brooke Rollins]

Who's got the guts to do this?

[Josh Holmes]

Totally only Donald Trump. But I got to imagine you got a few phone calls on Liberation Day.

[Brooke Rollins]

You got Liberation Day. Liberation Day may have been been Blowbrook's phone update looking back now, because it's true, and there were so many that said this is an absolute disaster and we're going to make worse what Joe Biden really blew up. We had a trade surplus leaving Trump one. We came back four years later to a $50 billion agriculture trade deficit, ag bankruptcies at an all time high cost of inputs up 40%. It was just one thing after another. But you know, for me and just talking, a lot of people say, oh, we've never seen an ex secretary on TV so much. And it's not that I love to do that, but what I decided to do is I've got to talk to the American people and help explain why this is so important. Up until Liberation Day, the average tariff put on an American good leaving America was about 15%. The average good coming into America that was tariff was about 5%. So this innately wrong, unfair system that had been imposed on America, Donald Trump said no more. And he understands that we have to move at warp speed because four years is not a lot of time. So instead of negotiating with China for a couple months and then we finish that one and then we go over here and we negotiate with Bangladesh and then we go talk to Indonesia and then we call Japan, he's like, we're going to do it all at one time. And that's what he did. And it worked. You see the deficit coming down, you see our. We had a 36% increase in corn for my Midwestern guys here and exports over the last year, dairy went up 23%. Export, it's working. And so we just got to continue it, continue it, continue it. We're changing everything.

[Michael Duncan]

Speaking of dairy, I hear we're bringing back whole milk.

[Brooke Rollins]

I mean, honestly, I should have brought milk for everyone. How great for us to all be drinking milk.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, Hollywood hen who just outside that door I think has like a 15 gallon jug, seriously, whole milk is back.

[Brooke Rollins]

And to think about what the Obamas did. Well, a lot of what the Obamas did, not good. But I think one of the worst things they did was Michelle Obama's war on saturated fat, on healthy fat, whether it's red meat or whole milk or butter or cheese. I mean, all us farm state kids love all of this, but taking whole milk out of schools about 13 years ago, taking real food off of plates and putting processed packaged food instead, that was low fat, to battle obesity, has actually done exactly the opposite. We are the most unhealthy country in the world right now, and that's because of what we eat. 40 cents of every taxpayer dollar. Think about that. 40% of taxpayer dollars go to healthcare in this country, mostly Medicaid, et cetera. So we are changing that. Bobby Kennedy, my big partner in all this, the new dietary guidelines. Eat real food, get whole milk back in schools, and let's get our country healthy again.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, I know Smash was disappointed. He had to take margarine out of his refrigerator.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, he loves margarine.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, you know, it's a guilty pleasure. You're not supposed to do it.

[Brooke Rollins]

Butter is better.

[John Ashbrook]

I don't disagree.

[Michael Duncan]

He likes the spread.

[John Ashbrook]

My grandmother makes chocolate chip cookies, so, you know, old habits die hard.

[Brooke Rollins]

I get it. I get it.

[John Ashbrook]

You've worked an awful, an awful lot on health and on farmers. I know you're also focused on reducing fraud. And there's been so much of it. Obviously, we talk, we talked extensively about Minnesota and everything going on there. But I'm just wondering if you could just walk us through sort of the steps you're taking to investigate fraud and to just like, beat it out because.

[Josh Holmes]

You manage a lot of these programs.

[Brooke Rollins]

Oh, snap, the food stamp program is usda. It's the biggest part of our budget. It's arguably one of the most fraud rife. Is that even the right term? It's the most rife with fraud of. And this is saying a lot of arguably any program in the country. We have 44 million people who take food stamps. It's a whole other conversation about whether you should have that many. It was only 17 million a decade or so ago under Joe Biden. He spent, increased the program 40%. The SNAP program in four years. Of course, they're trying to buy the election, right? We know this game. This is what they're working to do. The first hour I Got sworn in February 13th, walked into my office, drafted a letter, signed a letter that night, sent it to every governor in America. Oh, yeah. There's no rest for the weary when you're saving the country. Sent it to every governor, Republican and Democrats. We are going to fix this program. The days of just sending taxpayer dollars out and not asking for accountability are over within at least a few weeks. Every Republican governor in the country said, yes, please help us. We got all of their data. Every blue governor in the country other than North Carolina, to give him some props, every blue governor said, no, thank you and kind of flipped us off and then sued us. And so we are in massive litigation with those blue states. Here's what's really shocking. To answer your question, the red states that sent us their data, and these are states where the programs are much smaller, there is more accountability they don't have as they're not trying to put everybody on the programs. They're trying to keep people off the programs if they don't need it. And within those red states data, we found 200,000 dead people getting the program benefit. We found half A million getting twice. So they would get it once and then they reapply and get it again. This is in the red states. We are, I have about 100 people going through criminal investigation right now. So we are working on is I believe one of the unintended consequences, silver linings of the government shutdown. That snap became the negotiating tool. So y' all probably remember this. So I was constantly, the Democrats are, you know, they hate poor people. Like you're the one that's holding them all hostage with this. But it shined a light on this program in the average American, Republican or Democrat, there are Democrats out there who don't want their taxpayer dollars wasted either.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, the stats were unbelievable when they started saying there is shocking tens of millions of people that rely on it. So, like wait, shocking.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, and you'd think that the people who say that they care about the poor people would want to make sure that money goes to poor people.

[Brooke Rollins]

Exactly, exactly. But that's not the game. The game is to get as much money into voters hands, legal and illegal and work to again protect your fiefdom. And that's their goal. It's not about the poor. It's not about serving those who need it the most. It's not about having programs that work for those as we're trying to get them back onto their feet and they can go get a good job and live the American dream, which we proved out in Trump won is possible. And so that's what we're fighting. And for your Minnesota, I have deep Minnesota roots too. I do believe as bad as it is, it's only the tip of the iceberg. When we get into California.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, no, I agree.

[Brooke Rollins]

When we get into Illinois, when we get into New York, I think what we're going to discover is going to be mind blowing.

[Josh Holmes]

Can I ask you, look, you've been studying this stuff for a long time, long before you had this role. Is it dispiriting at all to get to the point where you can come to the rightful condition Conclusion, And I agree, it's the rightful conclusion that there is a party in America that is representing fraud as a electoral opportunity. Like, because it took me when I started in this line of work.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

It was different ways, getting at the same goal.

[Brooke Rollins]

Yes, right. Yes.

[Josh Holmes]

They were like, we grow government because that's what we're like. Well, that's not going to work. Here's a better way of doing it. But that was the argument. And then, you know, you get to 2025 and 2026 and you look at it, it's like, no, there's no other conclusion to come to. I know there is a party that has literally decided the best way for us to remain electorally viable is to commit rampant fraud to the point where we're paying people.

[Brooke Rollins]

Yeah, it's true. For me, there are moments of like, oh, how did we get to this spot? But then I decided, well, I've got to double down, because if I don't, and if good people don't totally, then we really are done. For me, a really defined, and I grew up in Texas, a huge state policy person, you know, the 10th amendment, for me, let the states, you know, that's where the power should be, get it out of the federal government. And so in Texas, I saw a little bit of it, but where I really woke up to it was in the election fraud of 2020 with the president, when these blue states not only weren't willing to purge their voter rolls of dead and illegal people, but they wouldn't even agree to a voter id.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Brooke Rollins]

Wait a minute. Is this the superpower, not just in today's world, but in all of world history, where we can go to the other side of the world, put our ATM card in an ATM machine in a third world country, get cash back that we trust? For the most part, we're in. In a country where we don't even know who's voting for our leadership, and they won't even even try to fix it. They'll double down on it. That's when I realized that the intentions of most of the left are so nefarious and so dark. It's just so dark that that is this moment we're living in right now. And that is why Donald Trump is such an important game changer and historical figure.

[Tom Homan]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

I mean, it's a great statesman. Bill Engvall would say, there's your sign, there's your sign.

[Brooke Rollins]

There's your sign.

[John Ashbrook]

No, I mean, like, it's stunning how they just keep doubling and tripling down on this in all the states. And it's just, I mean, like, I cannot wait to see what you uncover at California, New York, Illinois, some of these states where, you know, it's worse than anybody's worst nightmare.

[Josh Holmes]

So going back to your dietary guidelines for a second, here's the thing that I love with you and Bobby rolled out. Is it inverted?

[Brooke Rollins]

The whole thing just flipped, the whole thing upside down.

[Josh Holmes]

And it's based on scientific fact, and this is the deal. But then you start to sort of deconstruct how we got there in the first place, where it was where it was. And you understand, there's all these interests that have sort of controlled all of these components of it. And the perfect component. And this is not a health food by any stretch of the imagination. But I saw a report last week by Jamie Cohen, good farm guy, right? But an oversight committee guy who was talking about how the Biden administration wanted to insert into their dietary guidelines guidance about alcohol use. And they put six basically prohibitionists from Canada on a oversight committee to then make a recommendation that basically eliminated alcohol from the United States of America based on science that didn't exist. And he asked for the science that didn't provide it. And like, for me, it was such a perfect encapsulation. Obviously, we like bourbon around here, so we take a special interest in that kind of thing. But it got me thinking about, you know, milk and grains and food, cheese, all these different components that. That's probably, again, the tip of the iceberg in terms of how these people have made decisions about what goes into your body or what the government recommends.

[Brooke Rollins]

Anyway and to go even a step further. And this is why, again, love him or not, some days, you know, there are a lot of people who question the President's approach and his decision making. But what I would say is one of the single most important things he has done and represented in him. His leadership in our administration is we're not beholden to anyone but the American people. That's all we care about, is serving the American people. And that is such a fundamental difference. The way our electoral and election system is set up, you are, you know, you've got to raise money to run the elections. And in the first term, I kind of. I was domestic policy, so I did a little bit of everything. And I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but when we started talking about bringing drug prices down in the first term, and the. You can't imagine the Republicans, the conservative think tanks that would call me and say, but, you know, the pharmaceutical company is the single largest donor to the Republican Party. And in a panic because a lot of big corporations support the other side, which is also crazy. But it was almost. And we weren't hamstrung in the first term, but we're even less. Like, we don't even have those conversations in the second term. Where is this corporation? How much money did they give to these people? What is the.

[Josh Holmes]

They don't even care.

[Brooke Rollins]

No one cares. We just have to do what's best. And in agriculture, you Think about the consolidation of the industry.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, for sure.

[Brooke Rollins]

You think about how a lot of foreign countries have come in and bought some of our major food suppliers, processors, et cetera. You think about the SNAP program where the number one purchase of Snap dollars with soda and junk food. And why is that? It's because in another day, at another time, across both parties, there was a lot of openness.

[Josh Holmes]

Yes.

[Brooke Rollins]

And we don't do that. We just do what's best. I don't go to parties. I don't do the lobby events. I rarely show up at anything outside of this kind of stuff because I am here to serve the American farmer and the American people, period. Full stop.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, the takeaway from us, the alcohol thing that Oz was telling us, just don't have it for breakfast. Which I felt like was a fair recommendation.

[Brooke Rollins]

Social lubricant. Just don't drink it for breakfast.

[Josh Holmes]

You're good.

[Brooke Rollins]

We're all making America healthy. Everything in moderation. Everything in moderation.

[Josh Holmes]

Before we let you go, I have three questions that we ask. Perfect. The first is, and this is particularly apropos of our Agriculture Secretary, if you could plan your last meal on Earth, what would it be? You don't have to worry about tomorrow here.

[Brooke Rollins]

That's true. It's the last meal on Earth.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Brooke Rollins]

Okay. First, it would have to be a really beautiful piece of steak from an American. We have the best steaks in the world. This is actually proven genetics. The best steaks. So that has to be part of it. And then right next to it would be some beautiful kind of vegetable that some of our great farmers. But, I mean, we do. We have the best vegetables, too. I am a meat and potatoes grower.

[Guest/Announcer]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, I am the right crib.

[Brooke Rollins]

I know you are.

[Josh Holmes]

You all are my people. I was gonna object.

[Brooke Rollins]

We gotta have potatoes. We gotta have a really nice big baked potato with. Now, with the new dietary. With cheese and real butter and all the great things, I saw something that said, I hope your husband is appreciative that you're not a size 0, but you can help move a couch.

[John Ashbrook]

That would be me.

[Brooke Rollins]

That would be me. I am very strong and I can move a couch. Yes, yes. Thanks to my steak and potatoes. And I actually mean this. An actual glass of whole. I have been drinking. There's a picture of me out there with a glass of whole milk. That looks like it's staged. That's what I drink at one or two meals a day and have forever.

[Josh Holmes]

I never assumed it was a White Russian. No, I'm Kidding. I'm joking. Although I do love White Russians.

[Brooke Rollins]

Yeah, White Russians are quite tasty. And then for dessert, would have to be some ice cream. That sounds pretty tasty to me. Yeah, chocolate chip ice cream.

[Josh Holmes]

Great meal. All right.

[Brooke Rollins]

But I do love a good pepperoni pizza, too.

[Josh Holmes]

I know, I know. Maybe just like an app, you know.

[Brooke Rollins]

Appetizer. Yes.

[Smuggler]

I love it.

[Brooke Rollins]

Love it.

[Josh Holmes]

I'm in something thin crust, so you can leave real room.

[Brooke Rollins]

Yes, exactly.

[Josh Holmes]

So, second question. Listen, you've been incredibly successful. Obviously, you are where you are. But with the benefit of retrospect, having seen and gone and experienced all of your career and everything, there is. There's always, like, a couple of things that you think back. Like, if I had another life to live, would I have done something entirely different? And what is it that I'm super excited about that I just. Obviously, at this point in my life, I'm not gonna have the chance to do. But with the benefit of retrospect, I.

[Brooke Rollins]

Would have been a professional barrel racer.

[Guest/Announcer]

Wow.

[Brooke Rollins]

And, in fact. In fact, I told Mark Rollins, my husband, that when I'm finished with this, I'll be 56 or 57 a couple years, and I'm going to start barrel racing again.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, really? Oh, incredible.

[Brooke Rollins]

Yes. So it may not be completely out of the question. This is a very true story. Of course. He rolls his eyes and says, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

[Josh Holmes]

We're going to sponsor the barrel.

[Brooke Rollins]

Y' all could be the first sponsor. I'm like, by the age of 60, my goal is to be at the National Finals Rodeo as a contestant. As a barrel. I grew up barrel racing. I hadn't done it in so long. Yes. And I feel like I could still. I mean, sturdy. I still got it, y'.

[Smuggler]

All.

[Brooke Rollins]

I still got it.

[Michael Duncan]

Yes.

[Josh Holmes]

That's a really great answer.

[Brooke Rollins]

And I mean it from the bottom of my soul, too.

[Josh Holmes]

So good. All right, so third and final question. Our view is that almost every successful person is motivated, even if they don't want to admit it, by one of two things. It's either the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. And it's not that anybody doesn't like to win or anybody enjoys losing. Everybody has the same impact on them, but it's what motivates you to keep going, right?

[Brooke Rollins]

For me, that's easy. That's the thrill of victory.

[Josh Holmes]

You're a thrill of victory, gal. And it's about a 50, 50 split.

[Brooke Rollins]

Is it really? Is it really?

[Josh Holmes]

It's a 50, 50 split.

[Brooke Rollins]

It's funny, something I have always called myself a pathological optimist.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Brooke Rollins]

Literally pathological. I remember walking out of the White House, what I thought was the last time ever, the night before Joe Biden was inaugurated at midnight, thinking, biden's going to be here in 12 hours. Everyone else, the world is ending. And arguably they weren't wrong.

[Guest/Announcer]

Yeah, right.

[Brooke Rollins]

And for me, I walked out of the White House and I said, thank you, God, for this opportunity. This is the end of the beginning of America first, the end of the beginning.

[Josh Holmes]

And you went to work and now.

[Brooke Rollins]

It'S time to go to work.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Brooke Rollins]

And that's what we did. So, yeah, definitely the victory.

[Smuggler]

I love it.

[Brooke Rollins]

I can see it.

[Josh Holmes]

I love it. We were due for an optimist, by the way.

[Brooke Rollins]

Were you?

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, we've been over indexing on the other side here lately.

[Brooke Rollins]

Well, there you go. Anytime you need that.

[Smuggler]

That call me.

[Brooke Rollins]

Probably. I'm very annoying, but it's true. Yeah, it's true. It's completely true.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, listen, she is our incredibly charming and enormously effective Secretary of Agriculture.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, here it is.

[Josh Holmes]

And she's going to toss her Ruthless cap on.

[Tom Homan]

Oh, look at this.

[Brooke Rollins]

We're going to finish off.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

It's national signing day.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Brooke Rollins]

Yes. Hopefully the Aggies have a better. We got a. We got a whole football thing going, but yes, I'm in.

[Josh Holmes]

We'll get the whole fall and we'll start ballparking things out.

[Brooke Rollins]

You come back in. Yes. And I'm signed now with the Ruthless team. Yes, I'm in. I would love that.

[Josh Holmes]

That's awesome. Brooke Rollins, everybody.

[Brooke Rollins]

Oh, thank you. Thanks. Thanks, y', all for having me. How much fun.

[John Ashbrook]

I mean, what a delight. You know, she is so smart, she has so much to offer and I mean, I didn't know she was this funny. As we saw here on the show.

[Josh Holmes]

Great sense of humor on and off camera. Great sense of humor. Busting wolf's balls a little bit.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. So good.

[Josh Holmes]

Gotta love that.

[John Ashbrook]

Good. I guess that's what you get with a gal from Texas.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, she's doing a well of a job at the Department of Agriculture and we should all be thankful for it because for real, there's a lot of stuff in there that deeply affects all of you, whether you know it or not. Everything from your groceries to America's farmers and how we ended up, you know, sort of lead the world. The breadbasket, as it. As it was. Anyway, listen, don't forget about this Philly event. This Philly event is a big deal. It's our first live show in an awful long time. It is going to be on January 29th. The doors open at 6pm when you go to a250philly.com ruthless, you can get your ticket. Doesn't cost you a darned thing. They'll give you the venue location. Remember, food and beverages included in all that good time.

[John Ashbrook]

Michael Duncan will bring spackling. He will repair that crack in the Liberty Belt.

[Michael Duncan]

I'm gonna do it.

[Josh Holmes]

I was thinking like a welder's visor.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. Gonna have to bring in the hard equipment.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. I mean, if you want it to.

[Michael Duncan]

Stay well and safety first you gotta.

[Josh Holmes]

Fix it for another 250. So we'll get it done. Thank you for all that. Doug. Remember our question of the day when you like and subscribe to the Ruthless Friday program. We read all of your response responses and today's question is what's the best way to help voters understand that there is no such thing as a moderate Democrat? Eager to hear your answers on that, we will get back to you on Fun Time Friday, which we're gonna have a very fun time on. By the way, I've seen some material that we're saving up.

[Smuggler]

It's been good stuff.

[Josh Holmes]

It's gonna be a comedic blast. You guys will love every second of that. With that, fellows, I think we did it.

[Smuggler]

I think so. Absolute banger of an episode. Gentlemen, thank you so much, Tom Homan. And thank you so much, Secretary Rollins. And thank you to the listeners. Remember, if you have not yet, go to the YouTube and hit that subscribe because it's more fun and video. So until next time, Indians, keep the faith, hold line and own the libs. We'll see you Friday. Stay Ruthless.

[John Ashbrook]

Sa.