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- [00:00]
Wayfair Narrator
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- [00:28]
Mary Margaret Olahan
Wayfair Every Style, Every Home hey there,
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Wayfair Narrator
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- [00:57]
Cabot Phillips
Every Style, Every Home Good evening everybody and welcome to Wired In. I'm Cavan Phillips, coming to you live from Daily Wire hq. Join me now. Close your eyes and have a listen. You can practically hear the weeping of panicked Democratic leaders fearful for their political lives, as the party's socialist wing once again proved last night that it is more than just a fringe faction. On today's show, we'll tell you all about the latest crop of socialist candidates scoring major primary upsets, this time in Colorado. We'll also walk through the fallout of the historic Birthright citizenship ruling yesterday and talk about the Republican Party's own internal war over the future of the party. And as always, stick around to the very end of the show for our live listener Q and A. If you're a Daily Wire member, start getting those questions in the chat. I always say I read every single comment every in that chat. Not during the show, obviously. After the show. And some of you questioned that one comment yesterday said if you actually read the full log, say the word tortoise tomorrow. So here you go, Tortoise. If you're not a Daily Wire member, clearly you're missing out on some very sophisticated conversations taking place in the member log. So go over to DailyWire.com subscribe and sign up now and and get your questions in. All right, let's do this thing. Roll that graphic. And just a reminder, Wired In Live is now streaming live at 4pm Eastern Monday through Thursday. Get daily coverage of the news happening right now. Hear why it all matters. We'll talk with experts who are actually in the story. Become a member and join the live chat@dailywire.com subscribe. All right, let's kick things off in Washington, D.C. with Daily Wire White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olihan. Mary Margaret, welcome. You have had a crazy day. You've been traveling around. You've been sending pictures to our team. You're up in the air. You're flying with Vice President Vance. You're at military bases now. You're back in D.C. at home. What is going on? Where were you today?
- [03:10]
Mary Margaret Olahan
So, Kevin, I started my day heading to Joint Base Andrews, which is the military base that the president's plane flies out of, the vice president's plane flies out of. And we went over there and took Air Force Two with the vice president to Virginia beach because J.D. vance was headed to the Naval Air Station. Oshona, Oceana, your viewers are going to have to correct me if I'm mispronouncing.
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Kenny Porcari
Oh, they will.
- [03:33]
Mary Margaret Olahan
But it's a base for Naval officers and sailors who were stationed in Virginia beach. And the vice president headed down there to speak to them ahead of the 250th anniversary of our nation's founding. He specifically wanted to talk to them about their contributions to our country. And he made a special point of talking about their contributions to Operation Epic Fury. And he talked specifically about how these service members and all of the members of the United States military, it is their efforts that have brought us to a place where we are able to negotiate with Iran. And, and he really emphasized this point, that it was not just because of the president and his J.D. vance's and Steve Wyckoff's and Jared Kushner's efforts, but also because of the very strong might of the United States military that we're in the position that we are today. He also assured them, kind of vowed to them, that they're never going to put our military in a position where they're sending them to battle and not telling them why. So a lot of reassurances on that front. And then we all did a gaggle with the vice president, had a bunch of questions to ask him, and then we flew back to Washington, D.C. and we're all back home. So it just kind of shows you a flight that would take you most of the day normally, or a journey that might take you half a morning can be accomplished in about half an hour if you're flying on Air Force Two.
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Cabot Phillips
Yeah, a little bit of a perk there, not having to go through tsa. Slightly better experience, I imagine. Very unrelated question, is Air Force Two any different than Air Force One? You've been on both plenty. Is Air Force Two like the little brother? Is it not as good or is it also very nice?
- [05:08]
Mary Margaret Olahan
Air Force Two is not as nice as Air Force One. I mean, obviously you're still flying private. You're still given meals, which is really nice, but they come in a paper bag. I think I have a video going up later kind of explaining my experience on Air Force Two. You can see it on Daily Wire's Instagram or TikTok. But look, the Air Force Two is kind of the little brother of Air Force One. Air Force One, you're served plated meals. You can ask for any beverage or alcoholic drink or tea variety that you would wish. Air Force Two still very nice. They offer you a cold towel when you get on the plane. If you request a drink, they'll bring it to you. Really polite, amazing service. But it is not as fancy as Air Force One.
- [05:45]
Cabot Phillips
Again, unrelated, but I have a friend who previously worked with the president, and you mentioned getting meals in paper bags. He told a story of President Trump coming onto Air Force One. He had one of his employees bring him like four bags of McDonald's in paper bags. And then the president was just handing out Big Macs to people. And he was specifically feeling, he was feeling the French fries to see which ones were warm. And he was joking with people like, I like you today. You get a really warm thing of fries. Just a fun scene I like to imagine, but a true story. But anyways, you talked with the vice president. What did you ask him about? What did he have to say when you talked to him?
- [06:21]
Mary Margaret Olahan
Yeah, so we had to ask him about some of the biggest news of the week, which we've talked about a lot on this show, which is the rumors out of the Supreme Court yesterday, of course, the cases we learned, the rulings, but also NPR's massive error in claiming that Justice Alito was retiring. I didn't ask him directly about NPR's error, but I did say to him, do you think that he will retire soon? Here's a little bit of what he had to say on that.
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Wayfair Narrator
Do you think Justice Alito will retire
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Mary Margaret Olahan
before the end of the term or
- [06:51]
Wayfair Narrator
before the next term?
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Vice President J.D. Vance
I don't know. You know, Justice Alita is such an amazing guy, and I think the Supreme Court, he would be irreplaceable. But of course, if he retired that's up to him. And we would try to do the best job we could at finding a proper replacement.
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Cabot Phillips
And on the note of. On the topic of the Supreme Court, you also asked him about Amy Coney Barrett, I know, who has been drawing some ire of Republicans who feel like she has not been siding with them enough. What did he have to say on that front? Tell us a little bit about that.
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Mary Margaret Olahan
Yeah. So I wanted specifically to ask, given that so many conservatives are angry at Barrett right now, I've seen a lot of consternation on the right. Also seen people on the right saying that she shouldn't be condemned as heavily as she's being condemned currently. So I wanted to see what the VP had to say about that. And here's a little bit of what he said on that point. Some conservatives are angry with Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Are you one of them?
- [07:43]
Vice President J.D. Vance
Well, look, do I think she made a mistake in the ruling? I do. I don't know how anybody can say that. If a person who is an illegal alien or a person, for example, who's pregnant and comes to the United States on a vacation, they have a baby, and all of a sudden their entire family gets the benefits of American citizenship. I don't think that's what the framers of the 14th Amendment had in mind. I don't think it's the right case. But look, it was 5, 4. Sometimes the Supreme Court makes mistakes. We're going to try to correct that mistake, but nobody's perfect, including the Supreme Court. See you guys. Have a happy fourth.
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Pastor Lucas Miles
If I don't talk to you, I
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Cabot Phillips
got to say, Mary Margaret, I respect the grind because you lost your voice last week. You've been fighting to get it back. And here you are for all of our viewers at home, yelling over the sound of a jumbo jet. Just to make sure the vice President can hear you, you got to ask him actually three questions. What was the third one?
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Mary Margaret Olahan
Yeah, so this was probably the most fun question. And I should note, Cabot initially, when he walked up, you gotta be really aggressive to get these questions in. So I'm like, hello, Mr. Vice President. And I started to ask my question. He's like, hold on, hold on. And then he gives a little statement first. And then we dove right back in once it was time. But for this question, I asked him about Ocasio Cortez, AOC as we might call her. She said earlier this week, she kind of condescendingly laughed and smirked and said that she hoped that J.D. vance would be the 2028 presidential nominee. So I had to ask J.D. vance about that and here's what he had to say on that point. Thanks, Mr. Vice President. Why do you think Ocasio Cortez says she hopes that you're the nominee in the 2028 presidential election?
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Vice President J.D. Vance
I don't know. I don't think much about 2028. As you know, my attitude is let's do a good job now. Let's continue to try to bank some wins for the American people. We can worry about the future when the future comes. But we got an important midterm election here. We got to keep the people in Congress who've been fighting for our troops and our veterans like Jim Higgins in office. That's what I'm focused on.
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Cabot Phillips
I would just love to give politicians sometimes a truth serum because anytime a politician says, I'm not thinking about running
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Mary Margaret Olahan
for President, we're like, okay, you're all
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Cabot Phillips
kind of looking, saying, sure, the Vice President's not thinking of it. And of course we all understand why you can't come out and you can't say, yeah, of course I want to run for President. I'm actually already lining up donors. I'm planning my trip to Iowa, of course, but a very interesting answer there. Mayor and Margaret, thank you as always for following around this administration asking questions that many people in our audience are interested by. Great work out on the trail.
- [10:18]
Mary Margaret Olahan
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
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Cabot Phillips
That was Daily Wire White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olahan. Well guys, last night Democratic voters in Colorado proved once again that the growing socialist movement in their party is not just hitting far left cities like New York and Washington D.C. in a stunning upset, avowed socialist Malat Kiros look took down Diana DeGette, a 15 term Congress member who is widely considered far left on virtually every issue. But Quiros makes her look like a moderate. The 29 year old immigrant from Ethiopia used her victory speech to call for the abolition of ice. She has pledged to enact a transgender bill of rights and give citizenship to every illegal immigrant. She's called October 7th the quote, Inevitable consequence of apartheid and essentially blamed the US for 9 11. Have a look. Do you believe that the 911 terrorist
- [11:10]
Oren Cass
attacks on America were the inevitable consequence of American foreign policy?
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Mary Margaret Olahan
Inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle east that forced people to believe that another act of violence was the only response. And again, just like I said before, our responsibility is to getting rid of those conditions that lead to violence in the first place.
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Cabot Phillips
Yeah. So the United States, according to a woman who's about to be a sitting member of Congress, forced these terrorists into an act of violence. That's 9 11. Joining us now with more is Melissa Francis, fantastic journalist and commentator. Melissa, it's great to have you back. Thanks for being here.
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Melissa Francis
Thank you. My pleasure.
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Cabot Phillips
So I know you're watching these results come in the way. We are a lot of us shocked by this turn to socialism on the Democratic Party, some of us saying, yeah, this kind of makes sense. Where do you fall on that? What does this tell us about the direction of the party?
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Melissa Francis
Well, I mean, I think that we shouldn't be surprised that basically she's just exactly in the role in the mold of Mondami. I mean, it's almost exactly the same thing. You have somebody who. It's not just that she's a Democratic socialist. She's going to be, I think, the first Gen Z woman in Congress. She's very young. She's very slick and polished. She looks great. I know we're not supposed to say these things, but people said it about New York's mayor as well, so it is about the whole package. She's incredibly outspoken. She's anti Semitic. Obviously she comes from. It's interesting that she hails from Ethiopia because this is a place where, you know, so many Jews were rescued and taken to Israel from there. So it's, it's interesting that it's, she's coming from like another backlash culture. But I don't think we should be that surprised. I think this is the model that is working for Democrats and the reason why is because it's exciting to young people. Obviously the right isn't giving them another alternative to that's better. They want something that's different, that's shiny and new, and they haven't seen socialism in action in their lifetime. So they're like, oh, I don't know. It sounds good. Sounds like it could work. There's a whole bunch of free stuff. It's very trendy to be anti Semitic right now. And so she kind of checks all the boxes.
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Cabot Phillips
I'm interested though. Do you think candidates like this, like Mom, Donnie and like heroes are. Are they tapping into an ideology that is already growing? Are they just a reflection of an ideology on the left or are they capturing people with that ideology to where voters are saying, hey, this actually sounds good. Which one do you think it is?
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Melissa Francis
I think they're capturing people with the ideology, unfortunately, because, you know, it takes a group of young people. So you hear this. And I recently moved to Florida from New York. But in New York, you'll hear like a group of young people arguing for socialism saying, well, this sounds great. There's so many billionaires in our city, of course they should. The bus should be free. I don't have a chance. I'm never going to be able to buy anything in this city. I'm never going to be able to buy an apartment. They should be paying more. I have no chance to get ahead. And then you see older people who came from communist bloc countries who say, oh my gosh, you have no idea what you're talking about. Like, that would be wonderful if it worked. It doesn't. Everyone's left and you're going to be trapped. And now we're seeing in New York there are no free buses and the first free grocery store is $10 billion and isn't going to happen the rest of our lifetime. And so there are a lot of young people in New York who are getting the reality of what happened. And of course, Manami's just going to blame Republicans and blame the system and blame everybody who's stopping him. But as we see more of them fail, you know, then younger people will be treated to what actually happens in Democratic socialism as opposed to this fantasy of what might happen. But for now, they haven't seen it fail in their lifetime. So I think it's both the package that the charisma and then what they're saying sounds like a possibility. And frankly, you know, this is such a formula, beating a 15 term candidate who's been in politics forever. If there's anything the younger generation hates more than anything, whether they were voting for Trump or they were voting for the far left, they want something new. They feel like what has been has not worked and it's time to try something else. So there's a whole bunch of themes in what she did. It's not just the Democrats, but that's a big piece and can't be written off.
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Cabot Phillips
One of the things that we've heard from the left is this comparison to the Tea Party movement. They're saying this is the Democratic version of the Tea Party movement. Do you think that's a fair comparison?
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Melissa Francis
I do, I do. Because what they're saying is basically it's a rejection of this is what I think my party is. I think I'm either left or right. But I don't like, I can see it hasn't worked. The theory of my group has not worked. I don't like the candidates who have been there forever. They've all taken government, you know, PAC money. They've done all of these different things. They haven't learned yet that it's really expensive to run a campaign and it's very hard to do it without taking money from someone. I'm not really sure how you're going to do it otherwise. The people who say they're not doing it are probably lying and getting money in a different way. So all these things that, you know, they think they're against and it makes sense ideologically, they haven't learned that in practical terms, it doesn't work. You can't. It would be great in pretend land, but in the real world, it does take money to run a campaign. It's. Social socialism doesn't work.
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Cabot Phillips
Yeah, we've seen a growing push for publicly funded campaigns. Bernie Sanders has pushed that in New York City. They have somewhat a version of that. Wouldn't be surprised, I think, if we see more candidates calling for that, in their view, to get money out of politics. There's an interesting report that came out today of Kamala Harris supposedly reaching out personally to Zorra Mandani and also reaching out to other Palestinian activists elsewhere. We saw Illinois Governor J.B. pritzker on CNN, and he said the strategy of these socialist candidates, quote, is the recipe for winning in 2026 and beyond. Do you think this is a sign of how the Democratic establishment is gonna treat this wing of the party? Are they gonna have to cozy up or else they're gonna be eaten by them?
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Melissa Francis
I do think so. I don't know about after 2026, because as we know, politics can change so dramatically in the matter of one election cycle. But I think that we definitely see for the midterms that this is who's in control of the party. Because it reminds me, if I can relate it to television, you know, before you wanted to be broad, you wanted to have as many people in your tent as possible. But now we know that broad is boring. And no one's doing it. Like, who watches CBS anymore? No one. So when you try to be a centrist candidate or you try to appeal to the masses, it just turns out that nobody comes and votes. What you need is passion. What you need is, you know, fire. That's the only way to get noticed in a very crowded world where we have. Our attention's so divided, so many places. You could look like with a politician, you're just. You don't get any traction. You don't get any passion if you're reasonable, unfortunately. So I think that a lot of the things that President Trump said, you know, in starting MAGA or even the Tea Party, it sounded very different. It got a lot of attention because they were saying things that in the past were thought to be political death. Like, if you said this, then you were just so outrageous that you were written off. Now, the exact opposite of that is true. You have to take a position. You have to say something that no one has embraced, that no one has said. And it's the only way to get noticed. Whether you're in media or politics, it's the same thing.
- [18:53]
Cabot Phillips
That's such a great point, Melissa, because I remember working on the Rubio presidential race in 2016, and the day that Donald Trump rolled out his Muslim ban, for lack of a better term. I don't know if that's the official term that he would use, but the day he started talking about that policy, I remember our campaign sitting around in the hq. We were looking at each other saying, he's dead. This is it. He's done. This is gonna be the nail in the coffin. We know that wasn't true. And I think it's helpful for us as the electorate and as people in the media to understand just because candidates are saying and doing things we've never seen before does not mean that they're not going to have electoral success. And there is an appetite from a lot of Americans to say, no, let's just throw out everything that has happened in the past. Let's start from scratch. And I think that's very helpful for understanding these issues. We have a few more minutes, Melissa, but before we go, real quick, I understand you've got a new film out this month. Tell us more about the profit. Very exciting stuff.
- [19:45]
Melissa Francis
Thank you so much for bringing that up. I didn't know you were gonna do it. Yes, I do have a new film. And we did three test runs in Florida, and we sold out and had to open more auditoriums and more theaters. It's basically. It's about how we got to the place where October 7th happened and what has happened since and what's coming in the future. And it's told through a personal story of someone who I actually found. He was in a film in 1990. He was 19 years old. He was training to be an IDF soldier, and the things that came out of his mouth were the most liberal. We can all live together. You know, they go into Gaza without weapons, without shields. I mean, he came from a totally different time and believed these things. Meanwhile, it's called the Prophet, because he predicted that October 7th was gonna happen the day before. He told people to be ready. The next day. He was down there and fought for three days straight and, you know, killed terrorists and saved so many people. And the story of his life from this, you know, liberal young. He lived on a kibbutz. His parents were socialists all the way to. I hate to say it, but hardened killer, hard right. IDF general. Now is, in my mind, the story of Israel and whether. And I'm not Jewish, I'm Christian. Whether you embrace what is happening or you think Israel's right, wrong. I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm just showing you how we got to this place. And I think if more people understand that through a personal story, you understand what's going on and maybe where we can go from here. But it's called the Prophet, and we are going town by town, basically, like a daily wire podcast tour all across America over the next year. So if you Google. Google me, Melissa Francis, my website, melissafrancis tv. We're gonna have all the dates on there coming up. And we've won a bunch of festivals and awards, so it's been really exciting. Thank you for asking.
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Cabot Phillips
Absolutely. It's an important story to tell, and we'll make sure to get our viewers to check that out. Melissa, thank you as always, for coming on. You're welcome back anytime. We appreciate it.
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Melissa Francis
Thank you. Have a good one.
- [21:48]
Cabot Phillips
All right, that was our good friend Melissa Francis. Let's say we get to the economy now. It is July 1st, believe it or not. Guys, we're already halfway through 2026. So let's talk about the economic trends that we've seen so far this year, what's behind them, and maybe most importantly, what is coming next. And who better for that conversation than the man himself, Kenny Porcari, chief market strategist at Slatestone Wealth. You guys can also go read his morning thoughts substack. I do that all the time. If you want to be more informed on the market, go check out Kenny's substack. Kenny, welcome on. Great to see you as always.
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Kenny Porcari
Thanks. Kevin, Nice to see you. And thanks for the introduction. How's everything?
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Cabot Phillips
We are doing great. I'm ready to go to the beach this weekend, shoot some fireworks, get sunburned. It's going to be a great weekend. Kenny, we're halfway through 2026. Big picture. How would you describe what you've seen in the market so far this year?
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Kenny Porcari
It's been an interesting six months. We've had a number of headlines that could have Driven the market much lower, but in fact haven't done that at all. Whether it was the war in the Middle east, whether it was the Fed, whether it was ongoing inflation, whether it was the new Fed chair, whether it was conversations about having hikes or cuts, all that that we got hit with over the first six months, had every reason to send kind of investors scurrying for the exits, not really sure about where we're going. What's the AI story? Is it overdone? It's not overdone. Is it alive? Is it dead? And in fact, we ended yesterday with the best quarter, second quarter for the S&P in six years. I mean, you can add the Dow in there since 22. We had the best quarter. The Russell, the Transports, all having their best quarter since 2020. So it's really amazing, right? As the market climbed this wall of worry, everyone supposedly worrying about all these issues, causing people certainly to be cautious and maybe at the sell button, but yet the market continues to trend higher. Quite honestly, I think it's bullish. I think it's healthy. I think we've seen in the last, in the last year, certainly the last couple of weeks, we kept seeing this rotation out of tech and into, into other sectors, the economy suggesting that it's broadening out. It wasn't complete liquidation because if it was, everything would have been for sale and the market would have sold off. In fact, that's not what happened at all. We saw strength in health care and consumer staples and consumer discretionary and financials and industrials. And so there was this kind of, this rotation where, you know, tech had once again, it was up 31% in the quarter off the April lows. And so you had a lot of asset managers that were rigging the cash register and taking some money, trimming positions in tech and using that money to reallocate it across these other sectors. So I see it as healthy, I see it as constructive, and I don't see it as a reason to be concerned at all.
- [24:36]
Cabot Phillips
You mentioned tech stocks in particular, just really climbing in the first part of this year. I've asked you this question before, but I want to know, I just want to check in with you, where you're at on it. Do you think that there is any sort of AI bubble? Is any of this a mirage? Just how overpriced are we looking at when it comes to these tech stocks?
- [24:55]
Kenny Porcari
So I don't think we are right. I think there are individual names that you can say are really stretched. I don't think the whole complex is overpriced or bubbly. Yet it doesn't at all feel like 199-92-000 com at all. And remember, and I think we've had this conversation too, the AI story that we're in today is nothing like what the dot com story was in 99 and 2000. Those were companies that had no product, no revenues, no history, no Nothing. People just put.com@ the end of their name and suddenly the valuations went crazy. Today these AI companies are real companies. It's Microsoft, it's Google, it's Nvidia, it's Micro. These are real companies, real earnings with real margins that are creating real products that are changing the world. And so I see no, no comparison between the two. And I honestly laugh now. That doesn't mean that some parts of it aren't stretched. I think there are. I think we saw that over the last couple of weeks, that rotation. I mean look at Microsoft. It was trading near $500 a month ago, was trading at 380 I think today or yesterday. Right. I think those are huge opportunities. When these names are down 10, 15, 20% I solid names are down that much. That's for a long term investor, that's an opportunity. For a trader type, it's a different story. But I'm talking as a, as an investor, as a wealth manager, somebody that's advising portfolios. These are great opportunities but again you've got to be disciplined and you just can't go, you know, willy nilly into just everything. I think you have to be very specific.
- [26:28]
Cabot Phillips
I'm glad you mentioned the difference between long term traders and day traders because I remember during COVID I was a little bored at home. I put a few hundred bucks into Robinhood and thought how hard could this day trading thing be? After about two days I realized I'm going to let the pros do this. I'm going to stick to the long term. But you mentioned the historic growth, especially for the S and P. It was a great quarter, but it was a brutal quarter for gold which saw its worst quarter in more than a decade. What do you make of that slide? What's behind that?
- [26:56]
Kenny Porcari
Okay, so let's put it in perspective again, right? Look what gold has done over the last two years. It's up some crazy. I'd have to look at it because I lost a percentage. I think it's up 100 and some odd percent dividends over the last two years. Gold never trades like that. Gold is an asset. It's not A stock, it doesn't pay dividends, doesn't have an income, it is an asset, it's a safe haven asset. I get it. But up 170% over two years is not normal. So this 14% pullback that we saw this quarter is absolutely nothing to get all up in arms about. But it does suggest that it had gotten way ahead of itself. And look, if the Middle east conflict comes down, if the economy remains robust, if we kind of see earnings continue to grow, if we see stability at the Fed and in interest rates and we see the dollar kind of hold steady where it is, I wouldn't be surprised if you saw gold continue to retreat. And in fact I said it in my note, I actually think the next stop for gold is 3,500. That's down about 450 or 500 points from where we are today. I think it way to close right around 4,000, maybe 39 and change. I think on the chart. The chart tells me don't be surprised if we see it go to 3500. And quite honestly, when you think where it was two years ago, it was trading at 2000. So you know, from 2000, 3500 is a 1500 dollar increase for gold. I think that's phenomenal. So I think that people have to look at gold as just what it is. It's a safe haven asset. It doesn't trade like mu, it shouldn't trade like mutual. And so the fact that we saw that massive run up, you know, it was during a whole lot was happening, right? We had, we had inflation worries, we had geopolitical concerns, we had the ongoing Ukraine, Russia war. We had central banks around the world from emerging countries just buying up gold, trying to destabilize the dollar. I think all that's settling down. And so therefore I think you could actually see a little bit more downside pressure to gold. Which doesn't mean you light your hair on fire and sell everything. Gold's one of those assets that you should hold and just hold. Just put it in the drawer and forget you got it. Just hold it.
- [28:59]
Cabot Phillips
Yeah. Kenny, we know that Wall street is often more volatile ahead of presidential elections. As you always say, markets hate uncertainty. Have we seen similar trends ahead of midterms? How are you expecting the upcoming elections to impact markets?
- [29:14]
Kenny Porcari
So there is some instability in the markets around both presidential and midterm elections. Maybe more so around presidential than midterms. But I gotta be honest, I think this year's midterm elections could cause some more chaos in the markets over the next couple of months, right. July and August, because now we're, now we're through that mostly primary season and now they're gonna start to focus on the candidates and election and the rise of these DSA candidates in places like New York. Which I'm not really surprised, although I'm not surprised, but I'm stunned at the stupidity. But a lot of that goes right to the fact that they have low voter turnout and they did a great job. Listen, these 30 year olds, you know, they're good with Instagram, they're good with TikTok and they appeal to that age group. Why the, why the, you know, the 40 somethings and older felt it wasn't necessary to come out and vote is beyond me, especially in a place like New York. But that's a whole nother issue. But I think that's going to create some anxiety for the markets at least until we kind of see kind of how that goes. And is it really spreading beyond, you know, California and New York? Is the central part of the country really going to buy into this DSA baloney? I was going to say something else. I want to say baloney.
- [30:27]
Cabot Phillips
Family program, Kenny.
- [30:29]
Kenny Porcari
I don't think they will. I don't think they will. And so we'll see. But yes, do I think you can create some chaos?
- [30:35]
Melissa Francis
Sure.
- [30:35]
Kenny Porcari
But listen, politics don't price stocks in the long term. They create chaos in the short term and therein lies the opportunity. Because when that chaos is created, good names get sold and get dislocated because people get nervous and they say I want to take my money out and they go right away for the high performance which again will be tech. And then they'll dislocate those names and that becomes the opportunity for a long term investor like me and like you now is what I'm hearing.
- [31:00]
Cabot Phillips
Yeah, I'm long term. I don't know about investor. I'm let other people do my investing for me. People like you, smart people.
- [31:06]
Kenny Porcari
You're a long term investor. You are the long term investor. Somebody else is doing it. But the goal is for long term for you.
- [31:13]
Vice President J.D. Vance
Absolutely.
- [31:13]
Cabot Phillips
Kenny, it's always a great time to have you on. We appreciate it. Everyone go check out Kenny's substack. It's fantastic stuff. It'll make you feel much more informed. Kenny, we really appreciate it. Happy fourth, man.
- [31:27]
Kenny Porcari
It's always a pleasure. Happy fourth too. I'll see you the next time. All right.
- [31:29]
Cabot Phillips
That was Kenny Poulcari, chief market strategist at Slatestone Wealth. Guys if you're watching Wired in on the Daily Wire plus app, thank you. If not, come on, that's where you should be. That is how you get push alerts when we go live. Breaking news as it happens and the latest from our investigative reporting team. The Daily Wire plus app is free and available now on the App Store, Google Play, Apple tv, Roku, Samsung, LG and more. All right, we just talked about the economy from a market perspective, but I also want to talk about it from a political perspective. President Trump has ushered in a new era of conservative economic policy, pushing back on years of Reagan era free trade and free market policies to embrace what many call a more populist or America first approach. Whether it's his broad implementation of tariffs, his use of the federal government to spur domestic manufacturing, or his opposition to free trade agreements, the economics of the right have no doubt changed dramatically over the last decade. But is it a permanent shift? And how far should the right go in this new direction? Here to help answer those questions is Oren Cass, chief economist at the American Compass and editor of the New Conservatives. Oren, thanks for coming on, man.
- [32:41]
Oren Cass
Thanks for having me.
- [32:42]
Cabot Phillips
So let's just start big picture. When we're having this conversation, I think it's helpful. Just how would you describe this new economic movement of the right? What are its core tenets?
- [32:53]
Oren Cass
Well, I think the core tenant is a recognition that while certainly free markets are wonderful in the way that we want to organize our economy, they're not perfect. And in fact, left alone, they don't always deliver the best outcome. And what we've seen in recent decades is a lot of ways in which they're not delivering great outcomes. And so I think for what we would call the new right, it's very important to step back and ask, what is the market actually for? Yes, we want consumption. I love consumption, too. I'm not saying we should go live in log cabins, but we also want a strong country. We want resilience. We want good jobs that allow people to support their families. And so a lot of the policies we'd have been pursuing, things like free trade with China, the uncritical idea that more free trade is always better, the uncritical idea that more tax cuts are always better, all of that was great for the stock market, all of that was great for material living standards, but it also left a lot of people behind and I think contributed to a lot of the problems that we have. It's really important for conservatives especially to go back and focus on the actual good things in life. The conservative core of human flourishing and making sure we're trying to build an economy that supports that.
- [34:12]
Cabot Phillips
What do you view as the best response to what you view as the failures of the economic policies of the past? What do you think the right should be doing differently?
- [34:23]
Oren Cass
Well, I think what we should be doing is starting from this idea of what we want, what we need the economy to provide, and then work backward. And so maybe the most important shift we've been seeing is away from just consumption as the only goal, which is how a lot of economists tend to measure it, and instead to a focus on production, to thinking that we want an economy where our productive capacity is growing, an economy where everybody has the opportunity to be a productive contributor to earn a living. And so if we're doing that, then when it comes to things like is it a good idea to offshore all of our manufacturing, we have to recognize the idea is no. If we're looking at a lot of the talent, a lot of the capital just flowing to Wall street, to hedge funds, to speculative activities, yeah, you can make a lot of profit that way. But we also have to be willing to recognize that's not actually creating value. We have to be willing to say we're going to put a thumb on the scale for the kinds of investments, the kinds of of profit that actually do correlate with good social outcomes, and not simply have faith that whoever's earning the most profit must be doing the most good.
- [35:36]
Cabot Phillips
There's no doubt that GOP voters have become more open to the idea of leaving behind some of the more Milton Friedman style economic policies and embracing the Trumpism. And whether you call it populism or the New Right or the America first economics, whatever, what do you think was the main factor that drove them to embrace this ideology? And when do you think that really started to occur?
- [36:02]
Oren Cass
Well, I think the best way to understand it is, and the best term to use here is we're actually talking about embracing conservatism, Right? Someone like Milton Friedman, someone like Friedrich Hayek, would never have said that they were conservatives. In fact, one of Hayek's most famous essays is literally called why I Am Not a Conservative. And what you saw in the Reagan era was Reagan really embraced and brought into the coalition a lot of libertarians, a lot of folks that didn't care at all about conservative principles or concerns. And frankly, for purposes of winning the Cold War and for defeating communism, we allowed that sort of absolutist free market ideology to steer our economic policy. And I think what you're Seeing now is a lot of voters, the typical Republican voter, frankly, the typical American say, you know, wait a minute, a lot of these ideas from a Friedman or a Hayek, a lot of the kind of blind faith in free markets, we certainly don't share that. That certainly doesn't describe the world that we see around us. And especially in recent decades with things like free trade with China, with things like essentially open borders, which is another thing you'll see the kind of free market absolutists be very supportive of. Those things don't work. And so I think what people are really willing to do is kind of throw out kind of a dogma. You sort of had this priesthood that was asserting that they had this special knowledge and we all just had to trust them. And at some point, you know, when the rain doesn't come, you have to tell the medicine man, we don't actually have a lot of faith in the rain dance anymore. So I think it's really much more a return to the American tradition and the conservative tradition than anything else you bring up China.
- [37:47]
Cabot Phillips
On that topic, one of the things I commonly hear from folks who support the more Friedman Reagan style of economics is look, yes, the opening of free trade with China and other parts of the world, it did in many ways hollow out our manufacturing class. It did lead to the closure of many manufacturing plants and things of that nature, factories. But for millions more Americans, it led to more affordable products and more access to different goods so they can make their own choices. How do you respond to those critics?
- [38:19]
Oren Cass
Well, I think I'd say two things. One is, let's not group Reagan in there with Friedman in that way. Reagan actually took an incredibly aggressive protectionist trade policy. At the time, the issue was Japan. But when he left office, the Cato Institute called him the worst protectionist since Herbert Hoover. Reagan himself understood the limits of some of these ideas, even if some of the people who came after did not. But I think what it's really important to say about the kind of, well, look at all the cheap stuff that we got is two things. One, again, this goes to the point about production versus consumption. Cheap stuff is not all there is in the world. I think all things equal, it's good that we're bringing down prices. But if you're doing that at the expense of entire swaths of the country, geographically, at the expense of entire classes of people, at the expense of people's ability to really build decent lives for themselves, you're not making progress. And I think one thing that's been very Pivotal in the change of people's thinking has been the opioid crisis and the research on so called deaths of despair. And to recognize if your TV costs a little bit more, maybe you don't get quite as big a flat screen tv, that's a very different kind of consequence than, oh, you know, all of the jobs have left your area and you can't support your family anymore. So there's that kind of immediate trade off to consider. And then the other thing I'd say is that a real problem with the market fundamentalism is it's all short term, it all looks in the moment. Hey, isn't the cheap stuff great? But if you look over time, what we're seeing in the American economy at this point is that even our level of growth, our level of innovation, productivity growth, wage growth growth, national security, resilience, all of these things start to erode. And so what we've sort of been doing is living on the credit card for a very long time. And again, you can say in the moment, well, this is great, look, I bought it on the credit card, I got more stuff and I didn't have to pay for it. But I think most of us have the common sense to see that's not actually a strategy.
- [40:31]
Cabot Phillips
Oren One of the strongest proponents of this ideology is Vice President J.D. vance. Our colleague Michael Knowles sat down with the Vice President yesterday. I wanna play a clip of him talking about this topic, particularly with regard to the culture that we have in America. Let's go ahead and roll that tape and I'll get your response.
- [40:53]
Vice President J.D. Vance
Part of why Milton Friedman's ideas made more sense in the 1980s is because they were being advocated in a country that still had a very rich and powerful institutional Christianity. And so like being laissez faire in a world where there are Christian guardrails on everything is a much different proposition than being laissez faire in a world where globalized liberalism has become the sort of status quo of American elites.
- [41:25]
Cabot Phillips
Do you agree with the VP there?
- [41:27]
Oren Cass
I think yeah, he's getting at something very important, which is that, you know, one of the things that free markets need to work is that stable foundation underneath them that is social, that is cultural for a lot of people is going to be religious in nature. It's one of the reasons that American Compass, we've just launched a major new initiative that we call Reclaiming American Citizenship. Because there's a lot of very important technical work to be done on getting trade policy right. But a huge part of what has gone Wrong is more fundamentally that we have eliminated even the sense of solidarity, that we are people in a nation who have responsibilities, who are in relationships, who owe something to someone besides themselves. And if you don't get that stuff right, you're going to have a very hard time rebuilding an economy that works for anybody, frankly. And I think the one other thing to really keep in mind is that these things go both ways. That is, to my point, about thinking about things over time. The longer you embrace the laissez faire, the longer you push for the kind of liberal globalism, the more you undermine those foundations. And so there's a way that we sort of, as people would say, kind of ate our own seed corn. We eroded and consumed the very things that we needed if we were going to be prosperous in the long run.
- [42:50]
Cabot Phillips
Speaking of the long run, do you believe that this ideology on the right is in it for the long run, or do you think this is something that will struggle to continue to grow once President Trump is out of office?
- [43:02]
Oren Cass
No, I think it's absolutely here for the long run. I think, if anything, President Trump is something of a transitional figure in this narrative. I mean, I think Trump himself has times at which he's focused and sounds very much in line with some of this more conservative economic thinking. There's also a lot of times when his focus is very much on. On what would have been the more traditional GOP priorities of a decade ago. But if you look sort of past him to the generation of leaders coming next, whether it is folks like Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Rubio, people in Congress like Senator Banks, Senator Moreno, Senator Hawley, Senator Schmidt, really everybody who is moving forward as the most effective and successful next wave of conservatives, I would say, pushes on these themes even more strongly than the president does. And when you then look even kind of younger than that at who is the next cohort of journalists, of lawyers, of economic policy folks, of policy advisors, people in the administration, I think it's safe to say that among those under 40, probably 80 or 90% of, of the most effective and thoughtful people in this are thinking in this way. And so it's almost a demographic inevitability that conservatism is going to continue in this direction. I would say it's just good news that it also happens to be right.
- [44:29]
Cabot Phillips
It's going to be a fascinating thing to watch, and this is a fascinating topic. So, Oren, we really appreciate you coming on, bringing your insight here. We really appreciate it.
- [44:39]
Oren Cass
Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right.
- [44:41]
Cabot Phillips
That Was Oren Cass. And let's turn now to our other camera. You know what that means when I change cameras. It's time for a little rice and beans with Tim Rice. Tim, it's great to see you. I was reading the chat yesterday and there are some listeners who say that you and I need to produce and star in a buddy cop movie. Would you be in for that?
- [45:06]
Tim Rice
Well, I've been saying this. I've been saying this for years. I think you realize, though, this is really a question for you, Kavad, because you have to be Beans. Like, this is. We're gonna need to create a late in life nickname. So what do you say, Beans? Should we do it?
- [45:22]
Cabot Phillips
I'm in. The problem is these buddy cop movies. There's usually one of them who is like the smart, serious guy. The other one is just the dunce. And I have a feeling you're gonna make me be the dunce in this scenario. So I'm not totally in yet. I'm gonna have to be convinced because you're clearly the smart guy and that's why we bring you on.
- [45:44]
Tim Rice
I'll have my people call your people. All right. We can negotiate. We're in early stages.
- [45:48]
Mary Margaret Olahan
Great.
- [45:48]
Cabot Phillips
If only we worked at a company that was capable of producing movies. Oh, wait, they are, Tim, because you're the smart guy. Let's get your take on scotus. The dust is starting to settle. We're getting a better idea of where things stand. And we've seen a lot of doomerism from folks on the right about the birthright citizenship ruling, people taking the black pill. You're usually more of an optimist. So what's your take?
- [46:14]
Tim Rice
You're absolutely right, Cabot. And believe it or not, I'm gonna be very on brand. I am super optimistic. In fact, I think that yesterday's Supreme Court rulings were collectively a good thing, not even not a bad thing. So for a couple of reasons. One, let's start with the easy one. Protecting women's sports. That's huge, right? That's a great win. A lot of our friends, this company, have been fighting this battle, fighting to protect female athletes for a long time. More than that, we got, as I believe we mentioned yesterday on the show, the liberal trio of justices conceded that Title IX as written does not protect biological men who identify as women. So? So that's something that I hope every Republican running in states where this is an issue in the midterms and beyond write that down to say to their constituents, even Sotomayor and Jackson and Elena Kagan think this, so that's good. Now that's of course not what people are focusing on. People are focusing on the birthright citizenship ruling. They're specifically focusing on the fact that John Roberts and AB Coney Barrett joined with the liberals to uphold, uphold birthright citizenship. Now, I don't really know what I think about birthright citizenship yet. Ben Domenech, as he said yesterday, I think there's a kind of compelling conservative argument for it to avoid the creation of this stateless class. On the other hand, I agree with Clarence Thomas and what he said in his blistering 94 page dissent where he said that the 14th amendment was meant to perfect citizenship for the children of freed slaves who have been denied their full share in this country. And by, by expanding that out to pretty much everybody, it fundamentally devalues citizenship. That said, let's look at the actual decision. Nothing changed. The only difference between yesterday and two days ago on birthright citizenship is that the court said we're gonna keep doing it the way that we've been doing it. Right. So people on the right are obviously upset that Donald Trump's executive order stopping this has been struck down. But people who are acting like this is going to unleash the, this wave of birth tourism from Chinese elites and illegal immigrants coming over here to have babies and anchor babies and chain migration. News flash, folks, this is already happening. As Jenny Tare, our colleague has reported, Chinese birth tourism is already a blight on this country. Obviously we know that illegal immigration and people crossing here to have kids to stay here is a huge problem. It's basically the issue that got this president reelected. It all Amy Coney Barrett did was read the subject to the jurisdiction thereof clause in the 14th Amendment the way the Supreme Court and other legal scholars have been reading it for 100 years. She is a textualist. This is what she does. So why am I optimistic? For two reasons. One, this ruling doesn't actually change anything. And I think if anything it could motivate Congress to legislate around this. We already saw Andy Ogles in, introduced a bill that would ban Chinese birth tourism. We're going to see, I think, redoubled efforts to keep illegal immigrants from crossing. The Vice President, Roger Severino at the Heritage foundation suggested that the President rewrite his executive order to narrowly tailor it to American territories, which is where a lot of the birth tourism happens, because territories are not bound by the 14th amendment. On Laura Ingraham last night, the Vice President said that he was, he thinks that That's a likely way forward for the administration. The other reason I'm optimistic, though, is because this is what we want conservative justices to do. A lot of people are mad that Amy Coney Barrett didn't come in guns blazing and say, I am a MAGA justice. Guess what, folks? You don't want the Supreme Court making policy. You want the Supreme Court interpreting the Constitution the way that the Constitution was written. And this is what I like to see in young justices like Barrett, Kavanaugh and Neil Gorson, justices who are going to be on the court for a very long time. Justices who we might find frustrating now because they struck down one of President Trump's executive orders. But believe me when I say we're gonna be really grateful for Amy Coney Barrett and her unflinching originalism when President Gavin Newsom tries to amend the Constitution to abolish borders entirely or mandate sex change surgeries in school. So I am truly triple white pills about this. I think you need to look at it. You need to take a longer time horizon. You need to look at all of the cases in the total of how they came out. I'm not here for the Amy Cody Barrett slander. I'm not here for dumping on the Supreme Court. I think that this was an instance of an institution working the way that it was supposed to. Sometimes you're not going to like the result that you get, but ultimately, I think it's a good thing for the country.
- [50:41]
Cabot Phillips
Tim Rice riding in on his horse, the white knight saving Amy Coney Barrett from the Internet slander. I can respect it. Tim, you mentioned Congress and some of the actions that they might take. We've seen a number of conservative think takes come out and say, hey, Congress, if you're really upset about this, here are the steps that you can take. We've seen some throw out the idea of restricting visa access to pregnant women because it would prevent them from having children in the country. We've seen others throw out the idea of, you know, punishing parents and with a, with a heavy tax if they give birth in the country when they're here illegally. Do you think any of those things are feasible? And what are some of the more likely pieces of legislation to come out on this?
- [51:29]
Tim Rice
Yeah, I mean, look, I think all of them are feasible in that they're reasonable pieces of legislation and that assuming Republicans continue to maintain some kind of majority, they will, they'll be able to pass. I mean, in a perfect world, I think certain Democrats would join. Democrats should join with Republicans to pass These sorts of things, because it's like, help me help you. You wanted this, you're winning the war. Help us win this smaller battle. Right. Help us put up the guardrails. Right. And this is sort of the way this should work. If it's literally the separation of powers and checks and balances in action. The President, Congress failed to. So the President acted. The court struck him down, citing precedent. Now Congress comes back and says, all right, well, we're gonna do everything in our power to put guardrails. So it's not just. Right. The Supreme Court said what the precedent is. They didn't say it has to be unfettered. They didn't say that there can't be guardrails. And to that end, I think the punitive tax Democrats probably won't like. I think denying visa access to women who are pregnant is probably the most nimble and and logical way of doing it because it's the sort of thing where there are going to be very few cases of seven month pregnant women who absolutely need to immigrate to this country before they give birth. Right. And if there are special cases, if it's a refugee situation, if it's a woman who really thinks that her child will be in danger if they're not born here, there could be an office set up, or there's probably already an office set up where they could go and they can make their case. Right? What, what that is going to do more than anything is it's going to snuff out and suss out and kind of discourage the people who are trying to game out the system. I also think, as I said, the Anchors Away act, which is Andy Ogles Bill, that really targets the Chinese elite, birth tourism, because really we have two different problems here. There's the illegal immigrants who are crossing the border, having babies and saying, look, I had my kid here that you combat with. You combat with just more deportations and increased immigration enforcement at the southern border. But the elites, the CCP elites, who are literally landing a plane in Guam, getting off, giving birth on the tarmac, getting back on, flying back only for 20 years later to send their kids to receive elite education at Ivy League universities and then run for Congress, that's like, make that illegal. Target China. This isn't a matter of immigration. This is a matter of geopolitical and our biggest foe taking advantage of our system of laws to infiltrate our country. So I mean, absolutely, we can make that illegal without compromising the underlying ruling on birthright citizenship. So I think a lot of these Things are feasible and plausible. Whether or not Congress can or will act on it remains to be seen.
- [54:07]
Cabot Phillips
Tim, you talk about the infiltration of America. America has been infiltrated this month by soccer fans. And initially I was very hesitant to let them into the country. I thought, this is going to be terrible. But it turns out the World cup is actually.
- [54:25]
Tim Rice
It kind of rules.
- [54:26]
Cabot Phillips
It's kind of sick. I still don't like soccer, but the World cup is kind of sick. Especially when America's good. I'm going to put you on the spot right now. I know you're going to be watching the game tonight with some Daily wire colleagues in D.C. give me a 30 second pump up speech for the American team. What are you going to say to the boys in red, white and blue?
- [54:45]
Tim Rice
Boys, tomorrow is the day that the Declaration of Independence was actually signed. John Adams, in a letter to Abigail, said that history would remember the 2nd of July as the momentous occasion when the United States tossed off the yoke of British tyranny and rebirthed itself as a new and independent nation. What better way to mark the 250th anniversary of this great act of dissolution and nation building? What better way to kick off the Independence Day weekend and America's 250th year than laying waste to the Communists across the field? I refuse to call it a pitch, a soccer field, not a football pitch, because, dammit, this is America. You are Americans. This is our week. You get out there and win. You win one for the Gipper, you win one for John Adams, you win one for the American people.
- [55:38]
Cabot Phillips
I am fired up. I've never played soccer a day in my life, but I'm ready to get out there and score a few goals. Everyone at home. I did not tell Tim that he needed to have a speech ready that was off the proverbial dome. Well done, Tim. Enjoy tonight. Have fun at the game or watching the game on tv. You won't be there in person. You don't have that kind of money. But thank you again for coming on, Tam. We'd love to have you, man.
- [56:06]
Tim Rice
Always a pleasure, Cavett.
- [56:07]
Cabot Phillips
All right, That's Daily Wire D.C. bureau Chief Tim Rice. Well, we're now just three days away from July 4th. Millions of Americans like Tim are getting ready to celebrate, but sadly, not everyone is excited. A new Gallup Poll this summer showed that the number of Americans saying that they are very proud to be American is just 33%. That's the lowest mark in a quarter century. Here with more is Pastor Lucas Miles, Vice President of Turning Point faith. Lucas, welcome. It's great to have you.
- [56:37]
Pastor Lucas Miles
Hey, thanks for having me on.
- [56:39]
Cabot Phillips
I think most Americans hear numbers like those, and at this point, sadly, they're not surprised. We can feel this decline in patriotism. I keep hearing from folks who were around for the bicentennial and they say, yeah, the vibes were noticeably different. It seemed like there were more people willing to celebrate what's causing this.
- [56:58]
Pastor Lucas Miles
Yeah, I think there's a couple things. I mean, obviously we're in kind of this age of disillusionment. There's a lot of skepticism, a lot of our institutions that were formerly very trusted, from the medical world to the church world to education, to the government. There's a lot of suspicion and skepticism when it comes to these groups. And I think in many cases, for good reason. I mean, we've been through the wringer the last decade, but. But I think there's some bright sides here. When you look at this across partisan lines, we see about 70% of Republicans are still excited to be Americans that are looking forward to celebrating the 250th. I'm headed to DC tomorrow to be there for the festivities, and I can't wait to be there. I think this is an epic moment that we get to participate in. I know a lot of people doing the same. Of course, among independents, we see this lower at about 28%. And then among Democrats, it's about 14. And so I think we look at the left, I think we really have to ask them of, you know, is this really the country? You know, why, why are you, you know, what is it about this nation that you cannot get excited about when it comes to freedom? Our Constitution, the values that we have, we see so many people wanting to come to this nation, and if people are desiring to be here, we should be proud of what we actually have and really start rebuilding, you know, a nation that I think everybody can get excited about.
- [58:09]
Cabot Phillips
No, I know with Turning Point, you interact with thousands of young Americans every year. So what is your message to those young folks who say, look, maybe America used to be great, but what's so great about it now? What is there to be proud of? What do you say to them?
- [58:24]
Pastor Lucas Miles
I think several things. First off, personally, I've traveled to about 40 plus countries and going around the world, I've yet to found a place that's better than here. And I think that what we have as a nation, our religious liberty, our freedom of speech, our constitutional values, this is incomparable. I mean, the American experiment worked and we are seeing the success of it all around it. You have an opportunity to live out the American dream, to be who you want to be, to be, to rise to greatness, to work hard, to see effort for that. And yet do we have issues? Do we have things that we still need to address? Absolutely. We're in a fallen world and we believe that as Christians. But there is something unique about America. Personally, as a pastor, I believe that just the underlayment of faith that we have in this nation is a major, major part of that. And that's something that you can't find anywhere else.
- [59:13]
Cabot Phillips
Yeah. There's obviously reason to be downtrodden in a way, about the state of patriotism in America. But one of the most encouraging things that we have seen has been the rise in church attendance, especially with young people. I distinctly remember one of the last conversations I had with Charlie Kirk back in 2024 in Wisconsin, and it was before the election. He said, dude, we're gonna win the youth vote for Donald Trump. And we're also going to have a revival among Gen Z for the church. I can feel it. I can feel it. And it turned out that in many ways, we know he was right on the voter element of it, but I think we're now seeing that he was right when it comes to the Gen Z revival. Walk us through some of the numbers that we've seen when it comes to church attendance and then talk to us about what do you think is driving it.
- [59:59]
Pastor Lucas Miles
Absolutely. Charlie's goal was to make the most conservative generation and also to make the most Christian generation, which is really what my community team is focused on at tpusa Faith. You know, my own church tripled after Charlie's memorial. We went. I mean, it was. It was just radical difference from one week to the next. And we have, you know, maintained consistent growth. And we have about 12,000 churches that we work with across the country. That's up from about 4,600 churches since September 10th. And so we have almost 4x in the last 10 months. Charlie was not only right about this, this Gen Z revival, in many ways, his life shaped it, both when he was alive and through his death. And we have seen just a tremendous interest and outpouring now. Look, what we're still seeing, though, is a need for discipleship. And, you know, just church attendance alone is not enough. We have to add to that. Churches have to be ready to receive people. We have to be ready to receive broken people, people that are confused, people that, you know, have never picked up a Bible. Before. People have never hardly been in church before before. We have to be ready to lead them in a process, really a pipeline of discipleship, I would call it, if we wanna see actual systemic change for generations to come.
- [61:10]
Cabot Phillips
I know that your association with Turning Point, obviously you're on the faith side of things, but there are people who will say, well, pastors should have no role in the political process and pastors shouldn't be teaching and talking about political issues. What do you say to those people who try and say, hey, stay out of the political realm, stay out of the cultural realm, stick to your Christianity stuff.
- [61:33]
Pastor Lucas Miles
I love talking to those people because I think that first off, when you look at scripture, you're really hard pressed to find somebody in scripture that did not have some sort of involvement with something that we would call today politics. I mean, Jesus spent a lot of time talking to Pharisees and Sadducees who were essentially the lawmakers within the Jewish community. We see Paul making a, A, you know, concerted effort his whole life, which church history would tell us that he eventually was successful in this, of trying to get to Nero in order to share the gospel with the emperor. We see in the Old Testament people like Daniel, people like Moses, people like David, all the, you know, all the prophets that were basically, you know, right hand mouthpieces and, and consciences to the state in the Old Testament. I mean, you are hard pressed to find somebody in scripture that did not have some sort of involvement. I believe that our political involvement is an opportunity to show our citizenship in heaven, that because we're citizens in heaven, we want to be the best citizens here on earth. And that means getting involved in trying to make this world a better place.
- [62:33]
Cabot Phillips
You go around to college campuses as part of the, you know, the Pick up the Mic initiative. You have these conversations with young people and you know better than anyone the sort of distortion there is of Jesus by a lot of people who are not Christians or a lot of people on the left. And one of the ones that we hear, which is fitting given this rise of socialism that we've been talking about on the show all year, is this idea that we hear of, oh, Jesus was a socialist. You wrote a book on a lot of these topics called Woke Jesus. So what do you say to folks who try to claim Jesus was a socialist? So you Christians, you need to get on board with this.
- [63:10]
Pastor Lucas Miles
Yeah. And again, these conversations, as frustrating as they are, they also open up the door for so many great moments with people to really walk them through because scripture is on the side of truth. It's on the side of freedom. What we see here in Jesus's parables, for instance, is almost every single one of Jesus's parables is teaching some form of personal responsibility. And so this is not in alignment with a leftist or socialist framework. Jesus was not just kind of this barefoot hippie. He asked people to submit to both grace and truth. And that means that there is is a personal responsibility aspect to this. And there's also a plumb line of truth. There is a standard. It's not just your truth or my truth, it's the truth. It's his truth, ultimately, that we are following. And so when you look at this, we see in the Old Testament things like personal property is recognized. It was against the Ten Commandments to steal from somebody else. The idea of the redistribution of wealth, that I can work my whole life and make a lot of earnings and to take care of my family and leave a legacy, but then somebody's gonna come in and just take that from me and give that to somebody else who never worked. The Bible also makes statements like, whoever doesn't work shall not eat. It has some very strong things. Our current welfare process would be very challenged if we actually ran it through a biblical lens to kind of see, you know, you know, if that crucible, if it was gonna stand on the other side of it. So, I mean, look, Jesus certainly was not a socialist. And I would argue that so that the spirit behind socialism, not socialism is a modern, relatively new thing, but the spirit behind socialism I think we can see pop up multiple times in Scripture, starting in the Garden of Eden in many ways, and also in places like the Tower of Babel. It's always identified as something that's evil. And I think that we can recognize today that it's a dangerous ideology.
- [64:53]
Cabot Phillips
And I also like to remind folks that when we see biblical examples of what the left would call spreading the wealth. In the early church, for example, in Acts, these were voluntary steps taken out of an overflowing of love. These were people saying, hey, we're going to help our brothers and sisters in Christ. We're going to help the unfortunate, we're going to help the widows, because we're showing an example of Christ's love. Not, we're going to order the state to mandate that, that redistribution happens. You guys are doing some great work at Turning Point Faith. One of the initiatives that I love seeing is the Make Heaven Crowded tour. Before we go, just tell us what you guys are up to on that front.
- [65:30]
Pastor Lucas Miles
Yeah, absolutely. We're doing almost 30 stops this year across the country. This came out of of really an overflow out of Charlie's memorial. We were going to do just a single event in 2026. We recognized that this is way bigger than this and we had to really take it across the country. So this is Make Heaven Crowded is a single night. We come into a major city. We usually partner with a local church. Our first one, we had 5,500 people and 300 salvations. We bring in about four or five major speakers, usually a music act and others. It's a night of worship. It's a night of hearing the word, some great culture talks, and then always has some sort of a response time to be able to give your life to Christ or really, you know, as Charlie and Erica talked about so often, to make Heaven crowd and so it's been awesome. We're going to be carrying these into 2027. Hopefully we'll come into a city near you. There's one in Washington D.C. on July 5, and that's going to be at the Museum of the Bible. And so if people want to find out more, then go to tpusafaith.com yeah,
- [66:23]
Cabot Phillips
everyone go to tpus faith tpusafaith.com if there's one in your area, go check it out. It's such incredible, impactful stuff that you guys are doing here at Daily Wire. We're always gonna be friends with Turningpoint. We love what you guys are doing. And Lucas, we appreciate you coming on. Thank you for your time, man. Thank you. All right, that was Pastor Lucas Miles from Turning Point Faith. And this was Wired In. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in today. We are almost to the Fourth of July. We're in the dog days of summer. I hope you guys stay cool. I hope you stay hydrated. If you're on Apple and Spotify, I will see you tomorrow evening. If you are on the Daily wire app or dailywire.com, we're going to keep things going for the Q and A. If you want to get in on that on Spotify and Apple, go to dailywire.com subscribe join our live chat. See you guys tomorrow.