Right. Well, and also it shows it that she had already made up her mind what the speech was going to be before she even heard it. And that is not good for a healthy democracy. It's not good for civic conversation, and it's not good for somebody who is apparently still wants to be in some sort of leadership there. I thought one of the most important things for the speech was, yes, talking to people who aren't online all the time because President Trump does post a lot on Truth, social. And then on X he says a lot of those same things during the day when people are working and he's live on cable. He does some, a lot of interviews like with the press. But if you are out there living your life, finishing work, getting home, making sure the kids get to soccer practice, getting home and then cleaning, making sure they brush their teeth, go to bed and then you might catch 20 minutes of the news and of course you have to watch Gutfeld. You might not exactly feel that you have an understanding as to why are we in Iran and why is gas prices up $1.25 over a month ago? So he did have to talk to them. The other thing that was important in the speech is talking about future generations. So he thinks I believe in a longer timeframe as I believe most parents do. I'm not a parent, but I get to sit with many of you and of course your thoughts are with how, how is this going to affect my children on every issue, AI, whatever it is, all these issues, the debt, taxes, how is it going to affect my children? And he addressed that as well. The media is obsessed with the timeline partly because he is, he keeps saying two, three weeks, four weeks, he's saying we've won, it's over, but it's just a few more weeks, et cetera. He's malleable on that. I think that's fine. But the media wants a specific timeline and he is not going to satiate their knees by saying yes, absolutely, by next Wednesday it's over.
Harold Ford Jr. (4:28)
I saw you guys, but I hadn't seen Jesse even a week before that. It's good to be with you. I'd say a couple of things. I think more people pay attention to war than we give, than we, than we think. Do they know? Have they been paying attention to it like we have? Probably not. Dana touched on why it is really impacting and why I think a lot of people have been watching is because they've seen the price of gas rise in the last month by a dollar and 10 cent on average. And if you're not buying the high end gas or whatever the top level gas is, you're seeing as you're driving around, wherever you may live. $4.50, $5. Some people live on the West Coast. Six and $7. $6 for a gallon of gas. Democrats and Republicans both pay the same amount for gas. Republicans don't get a break because there's a Republican president. Democrats don't get a break because their party is yelling about things. We're all dealing with that, and I think that many Americans understand that, too. The president should have given this speech four weeks ago. As much as I listened to the speech and I've been following it, I didn't hear. Not only did I not hear a lot of new there, I didn't hear. I think it's wrong. I think you're right, Dana and Greg, to say we can't provide an end date, but what I did not hear was a strategy. And I keep asking for that. Not that I want to know every iteration, every unfolding of what we're going to do, but the President rightly praised the military execution. I mean, it's expected almost now that our execution by military exercises are flawless. From all the times the President's been in office from four years ago to now, we've never had a time when they were not flawless. I'm happy that is the case. We had concerns about DEI perhaps diminishing our military. In fact, it did not. It may have even helped. That's another conversation. The real issue here is the Strait of Hormuz. The President made clear last night that we're going to leave and other countries should step up and do their part to open it. I would remind all of us, and Dana has certainly commented on this in the past. We both know this is a global market. Oil is. We don't. You don't get to pick and choose the price of where you're going to buy because it's set by a global marketplace. We shouldn't kid ourselves. The President is most interested in this and talking about this as much as he does and shifting a little bit the narrative because the American people are paying more at the pump. And if there is ever an issue in my lifetime that has determined or dictated more political outcomes than the price of gas, I'd be happy for someone to inform and educate me what that might be. Finally, Democrats don't applaud the lack of the fact that there's not a clear narrative here. We are all Americans here, and we will all, all have to deal with the repercussions and ramifications of whatever happens or whatever does not happen. I don't like that part of the politics of it and sides are guilty of it. But my party is probably a little more guilty right now because the President is struggling. But if the President wants America and all of us to rally around him, you got to figure out how you reach not only a military strategy, but how you bring about a diplomatic and for that matter, resolution to this matter.
Kennedy (8:25)
Never called Joe low energy once. So that's just crazy. It's designed to be reassuring and informative and it's for, as you mentioned, Dana, the people that watch Survivor. Kamala and Colbert both didn't watch it, both trashed it. Greg, you said the other day the definition of intelligence is being open minded.
Kennedy (8:51)
But you got it. I mean that just makes them so dumb. And hopefully the rest of the country was open minded. Could hear him lay out the facts that Iran was a threat, that Barack blew it by giving them money that they built missiles with and that the United States is teed up from drill, baby drill, lowering inflation in Venezuela to survive the short term supply shock and get through this. And he didn't trash Naito. He basically politely invited them to deal with the strait. Now the issue here, and I agree with Harold, is that for the last 80 years, the United States role in the world, the bedrock of US Policy is to maintain the free flow of oil all over the place. So then all of a sudden Trump was like, hey, hey, French, can you guys get down here? And they were like, what? With what ship? They haven't done anything with the Navy in decades. So to expect them to do that is asking a lot they're unprepared. But Trump needs to. As he ends this, the ending has to end in the strait being open one way or the other, by force, by foreign armada or by ceasefire. That's got to happen. And so I think probably Rubio, he has nothing to do.
Jesse Waters (10:31)
Because they never acknowledged what we saw with Joe Biden. They never acknowledged the cognitive decline and the harm it was to the country and to his party and his presidency and his legacy and everything else. They thought that they would whitewash it with the help of people like Jake Tapper before he decided to make a bunch of money and write a book, and because that failed spectacularly and it damaged their party and they lost the presidency because they didn't want to gamble on an open primary. So now they've got four years of Trump and they think all they have to do is say the opposite of whatever Trump has chosen to do, whether it is Mark Wayne Mullen or what's going on in Iran. And there are innumerable reasons to be against war, and there are a number of reasons, if your guy is in office, to talk him out of something like this, because so much can go so wrong. Having said that, people like Kamala Harris and people like Seth Moulton will never be taken seriously. Because it's not enough to say, well, Trump's not gonna say anything, or what Trump said was stupid and that's the end of the story. No, there's more to the story. Because what's going on in Iran is incredibly consequential and very dangerous. So I want to know if this isn't the right thing to do, and maybe it's not. I will grant them that. What is the right thing to do? Like, how do you open up a diplomatic channel if you become President Moulton, what are you going to do with Iran? You know, they were essentially the hegemon of the Middle East. So could you have done this more quickly? Would you have had ground troops? Would you have ignored the 45,000 people who were slaughtered in the streets? Because even if you don't think war is the answer, what is the answer? And that is something that they will not address out of cowardice and laziness.
Greg Gutfeld (14:26)
Yeah. And I, you know, I think that, you know, when the data on crime and guns and demographics reveals that an overwhelming number of firearm crime is by blacks, they had to make crime into a story about gun access. And the homicide stats are as plain as day. But instead what they will do is they will point to incarceration rates as being racist when that simply reflects the crimes being committed. I mean this crime of this child is horrible. When any crime happens in a city and Harold doesn't do this, but it's happened to me many times. When you say it to a liberal, they will try to find out where in the city and that's the dismissal. And I remember when we would do this stories about Chicago and the on the five, it would be dismissed as that south side, like that's not really. It's basically the territory. The location is a way of saying it's black on black. But they don't have to say that. And also what you're seeing in this defense is the sunk cost of their disastrous beliefs which are so strong that they can't let go. They're like the Democratic Party. It was like the O.J. simpson party. You're responsible for such horrible crime that your only reprieve is through denial. It's like we just don't even want to talk about it. I had nothing to do with it. The Democrats became synonymous with crime when they made it a sociopolitical topic. It used to be in elections the Republicans and Democrats would fight over who's more tough on crime. It wasn't a controversy to imprison people for violent crime. But then once crime was deconstructed as kind of a, an action of the oppressed, the Democrats deviated from protecting the citizen and became a party that portrays crime as a problem of perception, a problem of racism.
Harold Ford Jr. (17:50)
Harold. So I don't disagree with really anything that's been said, but I would add these two things. I think the American people are fatigued by this shouting match that not happens here, but it goes on with politicians about crime. They're fatigued by the inaction and frankly are left less safe. I'VE said many, many times before. I don't think this is a partisan issue. I differ with Greg slightly, although I think you're the way you analyze it. I don't necessarily disagree with the diagram, but I do disagree with the fact that somehow another is Democrat or Republican thought. What I do know is the last time we had a bill, legislation that provided more money, more incentives for cities to do things to combat crime and train police officers and build more jails was when Bill Clinton was president. We passed it, the Congress passed it. President Trump has a majority in the House and the Senate pass a crime bill, dangle more incentives in front of cities who end cashless bail, who figure out ways to cooperate with ice, who ensure that we get the worst, the worst of the worst off the streets, whether they're legal or not. I'm not just a believer that people who are Americans should be able to know or any around the table. But sometimes this conversation can get to a point where we sound as if it's okay if you're an American and you kill somebody, you should get everybody off the street and for that matter, those who are legal should be shipped home. But we get so caught up, I think sometimes in the dialogue that we go back and forth. Now listen, yesterday as we talked about birthright citizenship, Democrats talk about guns and they want to end the Second Amendment. Thank God they can't. Thank God. There's a process that has to take place. I enforce some form of gun control, but you can't have the passion of a moment force you to just disavow the Constitution. I heard my friends on the set yesterday talking about the 14th amendment. If you want to change the 14th amendment, you want to change the second amendment, there's a process to do. So you can go and you can convince the legislatures in the country, get 2/3 votes and 3/4 of them and you'll have an opportunity to do that. That's how women got the right to vote 106 years ago. That's how we struck down voting things that prevented blacks from voting across the South. And that's also how we prevented presidents from serving more than two terms. We changed the Constitution so Democrats that talk about guns, I think it's an element of it. But we've got to deal with the crime issue. And Republicans who constantly criticize Democrats pass a national crime bill and give cities more money to do the right thing when fighting crime.
Jesse Waters (20:19)
Joe Biden did have some very racial implications. The problem was the response to that was this blanket idea that, you know, all blacks are targeted, not all blacks are targeted. And some people commit crimes over and over and over again, and regardless of their race, they should be in jail. But unfortunately, with this very unsophisticated idea that you have to open up the jails and you have to demonize the police, then you get the perception that your city is much less safe. I was walking to the subway today, and. And I saw a guy shirtless, screaming at himself, riding a city bike, an E bike, in the middle of the sidewalk with kids and dogs running around. I'm like, this is the kind of person who's going to kill someone. And you know why? Because there's no cops around, and there is a feeling that the mayor hates police. Therefore, police aren't going to do anything, and police aren't going to do anything. People feel like they can operate with impunity and they can do pretty much whatever they want because of those blanket policies in reaction to the national crime bill. And then you get mayors like Mamdani, like Brandon Johnson, who sit around while their cities burn, and they say stupid things like, well, I believe we should have no kings. Well, what does that do to make people safer? What does that do to make people feel safer? What does that do to keep businesses in places like San Francisco and Portland? You're just opening the door and inviting them to leave, and you invite the criminals to stay with your stupid policies.
Harold Ford Jr. (21:48)
The last time we had a crime bill, we put 100,000 more cops on the streets. And if it had a racial element to it was not intentional. Communities felt safer, whether they be black, white, or Hispanic. So I just. Or Asian, whatever they may be. So I want more cops in my neighborhood.
Jesse Waters (23:30)
Today is Transgender day of Visibility, when we celebrate the strength, resilience, and contributions of our transgender family, friends, neighbors. I'll keep fighting like hell to make sure every Michigander feels safe, secure, and supported. Oh, gosh. Not like H e double hockey sticks. Gretchen, Greg, you were singing a fun Trans Day song during the commercial break. Would you like to reprise it?
Greg Gutfeld (23:53)
I do not think we have enough trans visibility. I mean, I never hear about it at all, you know, and you know, we see more trans than the percentage of the population warrants. And we all know that. We all know that. And worse, in indulges the kinks of the men whose entire fetish is to shock those who observe them. The contributions of the trans population. I'm willing to bet you that the authentic trans do not want to be seen at all. The whole point is not to be visible. To quote, pass. So they don't know that you might be trans. Pritzker, celebrating Walking day is not accurate. It should be celebrating Walking with Security Day because Sheridan Gordon did not have security and she went for a walk and was murdered. She ended in death. That's the disconnect that really bothers us. I love, you know, the Dems. If you say the Dems are out of touch and I'm going to channel Harold, he'll go, well, isn't everybody out of touch? Republicans live in their own bubble too. We all live in my son. But you know what? The thing is, when you are a conservative, libertarian, or Republican, your bubble exists inside their bubble. Every day we are facing the assaults and aggravations of progressive thought. We have to be told about pronouns. We have to be told that we are racist and bigoted. We don't ask for a libertarian or conservative visibility day. We don't force anything on anybody. But we have to know what's going on in their world because they make it known why. I'm tired of Visibility days. All right, So I don't want a Jesse visibility day.
Kennedy (25:47)
No, I agree. I want a Trans Invisibility day. Sorry, but they have so many days. I brought it. Transgender Day of Remembrance. Transgender Day of Visibility. Transgender Awareness Week. They get a whole week. International Pronouns Day. Non Binary People's Day. Intersex Awareness Day. I could go on and on. The reason they're so visible is because they're in our bathrooms and in our sports and they change the English language. We didn't even need it changed. That's why no other minority group does this. The alcoholics are probably like, hey, can I get. Can I get a little attention over here? There's only one Veterans Day, but they have, like, 16 days in the calendar.
Harold Ford Jr. (27:42)
He has asked me that for. Son, we focus on the wrong things. The country is focused on cost of living, and we're focusing on these issues. I'm not saying we discriminate against anybody, but I like the walking day for jb. I think the health and exercise and fitness is a good thing. But the other stuff I don't quite get here. We are not talking, asking every day. Governors in their communities and cities and rural areas in their states, asking the president to lift all tariffs so that people can afford more things. Asking the federal government to figure out ways to help people make homes more affordable by a federal permitting, housing permitting legislation that would make it easier for things to be built and to help people under 30 who have been working, give them a year of down payment assistance for every year they've been working. And if they don't, we own part of that house. We have to be creative about how we try to invigorate and for that matter, make the country more affordable again for everyday Americans. But if we continue to focus on this stuff, I think it's nonsense. Just one moment on Stephen A. Smith. I think he has every right to say what he says clearly. I think if you, I think there are a lot of people who probably regret the way they voted in 2024 for Kamala Harris or for President Trump, people who didn't want to be in wars and wanted things more affordable. But you know what, Kennedy, that's what elections are for. And you'll have, we'll have an election this go round and we'll see what happens. We have a lot of polling, but the only polling that matters is an election. And I will note Democrats have done very well because in the last year and a half because they're focusing on what's happening in everyday people's lives. If you focus on the issues that people don't care about or affect a small number of people, it's not going to help us focus on the things that help more people.
Harold Ford Jr. (29:26)
Then tell me this, Greg, why is he losing? Why are Republicans losing in so many places around the country, including President Trump? It actually happens, right? Because when the party doesn't perform well. So I just think, I think people were, if you ask most people who voted, a lot of 30 year younger people in this country under 30 year olds who voted for President Trump, I gather I would imagine you'd see a lot of them or many of them saying or I wouldn't be surprised if many said what Stephen A. Smith just said about Kamala Harris that he regrets that vote.
Jesse Waters (31:35)
frankly, is foundational to Donald Trump's political beliefs. If we can argue that he holds any to be true. The thing that has been consistent is this idea that, that some people in this country are, in fact, not foundational Americans, that some people in this country, their citizenship deserves to be questioned. And so this idea that this is just about immigrants in this country, people who have, you know, maybe have come to this country seeking asylum, who have crossed the border illegally, who are undocumented, that is not what this is just about.
Harold Ford Jr. (32:16)
I think the court will decide that the president cannot. You said it well yesterday, Dana. The executive order is not the way to do this. If Congress passes something, or more importantly, you do it the way the Constitution is to be amended. And if the president believes the polling is overwhelmingly in his favor, then take this out to the country and get two thirds, three quarters of the legislatures in the country to pass it by two thirds, and then you have an opportunity to amend the Constitution. Just one moment on Simone. I don't agree with the notion. I think we're very quick to throw around. And that's her theory, and she has every right to it. People are too quick to label someone a racist or hurl that term. I think some people are racist and some people do things that tend that are hateful. But I think questioning birthright citizenship is not necessarily that. I think the president's done it the wrong way. I don't agree with him, but I think it would be great for him to lay out more clearly why he wants to do it and then go about it the right way. Which is what you shared yesterday by amending the Constitution.
Jesse Waters (33:19)
So having spent so much time in Southern California, I saw this birth tourism taking root in different hotels and apartment complexes. And it was a very lucrative business. And it was pretty horrible policy that people in customs were allowing women who were clearly 40 weeks pregnant into the country because that's what they were trying to do. But what I see it is more a violation of policy. And so a lot of these companies that were committing this visa and immigration fraud, they were punished. And people in charge of these companies, they were sent to prison. But in China, you know, they say that there's between 500 and,000 different companies that are selling access to American birthing venues for up to $100,000 apiece because, you know, it is still the gold standard to have a U.S. passport and a U.S. and U.S. citizenship. There is something wrong about that. And it is a violation of our norms and our freedoms. But I don't think that there is the political will to amend the Constitution. And I do think there are ways for Congress to fix this that, you know, have more weight and more longevity than an executive order, regardless of the
Greg Gutfeld (34:53)
You know what? It's kind of like, I almost want him to keep doing this with racism. Because who would you rather be mugged by? A guy with a loaded gun or an empty one? And the race weapon is now void of bullets. They've sapped it of value. It doesn't matter. And if everyone's racist, then no one is. You know, before Obama became president, the polling showed Americans were largely positive on race relations. Fifteen years later or so, the polling shows a sharp drop more, more racial division. And that means, and it's obvious that the more you Focus on division, the more division you get, it just deepens it. I don't think you should have to amend the Constitution at all. I don't think they were factoring in illegals coming over here to pop out babies any anymore. They were factoring helicopters and the Kardashians. So if you were born here, it's very simple. And I think Trump is expressing the way Americans see this that he can't even believe you're debating this. Our challenge as decent people is keeping up with corruption, keeping up with people who game the system. They're always ahead. And we sit there and we go, well, maybe we should do this, maybe we should do that. No, they're taking advantage of us. If you are born here, it is not enough. The parent has to be a participant in the system. If you are here illegally, you are not participating in the system, unlike children of slaves who were participating in the system. You know, Chinese billionaires are not the same as slaves. It's kind of obvious.
Kennedy (36:30)
Yeah, I'm with Greg. I see it as a fraud. You can't have the Chinese CCP flying here, having a baby, and flying home with a passport, and then the kid brings his family in and then they work at the Defense Department. It's just stupid. And everybody knows it's stupid. Mexicans can't cross the border, have a baby, get welfare, wire half of it back to their families in Mexico, and think that that's constitutional. It's a loophole that needs to be closed. And because you want to protect the country from fraud doesn't make you racist. It is a fact that people committing the birth tourism and the immigration fraud are not white. So if Americans want to prosecute that which is illegal, it doesn't make them racist. It just means they want to have a country. And Alito said it, he goes, we're not even prosecuting people that cross the border illegally. So they're just having babies here. If you actually could enforce the border and deport people, it wouldn't be as big of a problem.
