Brian Mudd (3:23)
It's going to be great for the economy. That is Congressman David Kustoff talking about tax refunds. We heard that they are going to the largest on record and in many respects the tax cuts that are going to be realized come tax time, it's endemic, I think of Trump's first 11 plus months, endemic of the successes of 2025, which is largely underappreciated and at times misunderstood. It's been absolutely incredible. And just like with the case of the tax cuts, you have so many people that haven't realized the benefit yet. Yeah, the Trump tax policy was made permanent, that was put in place during his first time. So that happened. But the additional tax cuts, so many people just have not realized that benefit because, well, they didn't change their withholding this year. And so it's not going to be until they file their taxes. They go, oh my gosh, that's what it really means to me. And I think without a doubt that's what we're going to see as we roll into 2026 is that, oh, we had that kind of success. Insert policy here. Brian Mudd in for Clay and Buck and the host of the Brian Mudd show, broadcasting from my home station in West Palm beach, just miles away from El Presidente and Mar? A Lago. It is always an honor and a pleasure to have the opportunity to share time with you. Thank you for, for taking time on this New Year's Eve to join me and you can always check me out at Brian Mudd Radio socially, the Brian Mud show podcast where you get Your podcast and the first hour of the show, I went through my expectations based upon President Trump's 20 point plan to save America, what he ran on coming into this year to see the real progress that's been made and rhetorically, it's pretty clear that, yeah, we made progress against all 20 of these things. Now, I want to get specific because the one thing I always talk there being two sides to stories and one side to facts. So let's talk facts. When I talked about this being our year, what has happened through the first 11 plus months? Well, take a look at the first item I outlined. If you waited much of your life hoping for fundamental changes with the way our federal government operates, like having less of it intruding into your life, that this would be your year. As of December 23rd, there are approximately 271,000 fewer federal government employees compared to January 20th of this year. The size of the federal bureaucracy, excluding the military, has shrunk by greater than 9% since Trump took office. Did you know? Almost a tenth of the federal bureaucracy, Gonzo. In year one, we've shrunk the federal bureaucracy by almost 1% per month that Trump has been in office. And I understand for those that our federal government employees have been impacted, that might not necessarily be a good thing, but for the rest of us, look, we don't exist and we don't go to work for a bloated federal bureaucracy to exist. Mention that if you've been waiting for the death of political correctness and wokeness that this would be your year. Well, there's a lot of context that goes into this. You have changes all over the place. To give you an idea, let's talk corporate America for a moment. So within corporate America, you've had 20% of companies that have outright eliminated DEI programs altogether this year. A lot of them that did it right after the election last year that were getting ready for Trump coming in, you've had an additional 10% of companies that had DEI programs that reduced the spending or influence of those programs this year on college campuses, big time. 432 colleges and universities across 47 states. So almost all states, even most blue states, have eliminated DEI programs this year. You start talking about college wokeness. The ncaa, they changed their official policy stance to end men that wake up and go, yeah, feeling like a chick today. Those kinds of people. The homosexual Alphabet. NCAA changed their policy to end those people pretending to be women and competing as though they are in collegiate athletics. That was big time. Speaking of that type of thing, President Trump also ended trannies in the military. You still have some legal battles about the extent of all this. But the one of the big things, the insane taxpayer funded conversions for those who have enlisted, which by the way, for a lot of the people that identified on the, the homosexual Alphabet that ended up getting into the military, the transitioners, one of the big reasons that a lot of them did it is because, well, you and I taxpaying types would go ahead and pay for that. Previously I mentioned that if you'd been waiting for a time in which the godless souls and slenders legacy news media would become irrelevant, that this would be your year. And you have seen the fallout all throughout this year, including massive leadership changes, massive news organizations including CBS News, NPR, NBC, including the big breakup from MSNBC, what is now, Ms. Now, and even at the BBC because of their January 6th editing fake news scandal, mentioned that if you wanted the rule of law to be upheld that this would be your year. And this can go in numerous directions. But consider this. It's so easy to forget to talk about the success that President Trump has had and how so much of it is like, oh yeah, if you think about these specifics, do you remember the very first law President Trump signed? What was the very first bill signed into law by President Trump happened in his first week. It happened to be the Lake and Riley act, right? So you talk about the rule of law being upheld. You had the Lake and Riley act signed right away. He signed 12 executive orders this year beyond that aimed at improving law and order and specific to legal challenges. Because this has been front and center, right? I mean, every time that Trump breathes, you have somebody that's suing him because he took that breath. And so every executive order, every policy announcement, somebody is suing about something. But when the cases have made it to the Supreme Court, President Trump has still had favorable outcomes on 21 of the 24 cases that have gone that far. 21 of the 24. Which tells you that the rule of law is largely being upheld ultimately, despite all the frustrations in getting there oftentimes I mentioned that if you wanted equal justice under the law, this would be your year. And if you wanted to seal the border, stop the migrant invasion, of course, this a big part of President Trump's 20 point plan. Well, of all of the achievements, it's probably the best known that's also the most underappreciated, the success with the border. Because not only did President Trump follow through on immediately sealing the southern border, total illegal border crossings, including gotaways they're at the lowest level in recorded history, having declined BY well over 99% from those Biden era levels. And to put it another way, there were often more illegal border crossings in a typical day under the Biden administration than we have had in over 11 months under the Trump administration. Think about that. We commonly had more illegal border crossings in a single day with Biden than we have had through over 11 months. And that goes hand in glove with the next piece, which is if you wanted the largest deportation operation in American history to remove the record number of illegal immigrants from this country, that, well, this would be your year, and it certainly has been. So a lot of people will take a look at the deportations by ICE and miss most of the story. We have had a record breaking two and a half plus million deportations. That's right. We've had over two and a half million deportations that have taken place since the onset of the Trump administration. That includes 1.9 million self deportations. As I mentioned in the first hour, that is the single best thing that can possibly happen. Because not only does that solve itself, that problem, but it also saves us greater than $17,000 per person, the process, because that's how much it costs to go through the detention process, to send ICE out, to have them detain these people, to put them in the deportation facilities, to keep them there, and then eventually to take them wherever. So effectively, in the first 11 months of the Trump administration, what's been accomplished? Well, they've reduced the illegal immigrant population by somewhere in the neighborhood of about one year's worth of Biden's open border policies. Not bad, lots more to go. But given how much harder it is to actually deport people are already here compared to just letting anybody and everybody across that border or find them IN or the CBP1 Home app, as the case happened to be, it's pretty remarkable. What's more is that Trump administration recently finalized a deal with Boeing to significantly accelerate deportations going forward. And so if they're able, if ICE is able to do a lot more going forward and you start having kind of that next tier with the those who have self deported. Like, you know what, it's getting a little close to home with these deportations. Maybe it's time for us to reconsider. We can maybe even accelerate that progress into 2026. So I mentioned if you wanted an end to high inflation and for life to become more affordable again, well, this would, would be your year. Okay. So of anything, this is where a lot of folks are like, look, life's expensive. Life is really expensive. Inflation is still high. Things cost too much. Okay, now, couple things about this. I've always said that you can lie to people about what policy will do, and those who are inclined to believe that politician might for a time. But you can't lie to people about what is or isn't in their wallet because they know. Which, by the way, as we are talking about Obamacare subsidies coming to an end today, the you have the left that's freaking out about. In reality, I actually went all the way back in my analysis of Obamacare, which evidently was greater than Nancy Pelosi's at the time. Remember, we had to, we had to sign it, I had to pass it to know what was in it. That's actually where I came up with that saying that you can lie to people about what policy will do, and those who are inclined to believe might for a time, but you can't lie to people about what is or isn't in their wallet because they know when I was dealing with the Obamacare issue way back when, and I ended up bringing out analysis that showed, no, this is actually going to create more problems. You're not going to be able to keep your doctor, you're not going to be able to keep your insurance plan if you want to. All these things that, that was the response I had for people who didn't want to hear it. But no, because Obama said, well, you, you can see what is or isn't in your wallet. You can see what the real health care crisis is, which is Obamacare. Some people are really continuing to struggle under the weight of cost pressures generally, and affordability issues. Don't want to minimize that. It's real. But with that said, the fact of the matter is that the average American is actually faring far better today compared to prior to January 20th. Consider this consumer price index. That's your inflation rate for the first three quarters of President Trump's administration. It's averaged 2.7%. Now, that's lower than the rate that Trump inherited from the Biden administration, despite the impact of tariffs. But what is most important, and this is what didn't happen during the Biden administration, the average income has increased by 3 1/2% year over year. Okay, so if you're the average person, net of inflation, you're actually doing about 1% better off. You got money that's left over that you didn't have prior to January 20th. That's the big difference. Because under the Biden administration, the average American was worse off progressively the average American by the time Biden was done with inflation and what happened with income growth with the average person about 3% worse off than they were previously. So it was real. We've reversed that in the first year by about 1%. So it still isn't exactly where it needs to be. Trump knows that, but we have made a lot of Progress there in 11 plus months. What's more is that as US economic growth has been surging, as was evidenced by the 4.3% third quarter growth rate, which by the way, that followed the 3.8% economic growth rate in the second quarter, the economy keeps doing a lot better than the so called experts think it will. We're seeing the economy grow far in excess of inflation too, and that should really help continue to facilitate wage growth and job opportunities despite the impacts of AI, as that's part of the conversation too. So there's a lot to feel good about on that front as we enter 2026. We'll continue with the receipts next. I'm Brian Mudd in for Clay and Buck. Patriots Radio hosts a couple of regular guys, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Foreign.
