Charlie Hurt: Congress is ‘full of cowards’

[0:00] Hello to both of you. Charlie, I'm not wrong. Come on, I'm not wrong. [0:03] This one little skinny anorexic bill does nothing for nobody nowheres. [0:09] Honest to God, how can they do this? [0:11] And what's even more maddening about it is it's not just one financial bill, [0:16] finance bill that's going to get through. [0:17] There's only going to be one bill, period, big bill, period, that gets through this year. [0:22] And the reason is is because Congress is full of cowards. [0:26] And they're terrified during an election year to do anything. [0:30] And I think part of the problem is that we're now thinking that Washington can operate at Trump's speed with Trump courage [0:38] because Trump is not afraid to do anything an election year be damned. [0:42] If it's something that's important to do and he thinks it needs to be done vis-a-vis, look at Iran, [0:48] he's going to do it and he doesn't care if it's an election year. [0:51] In Congress, we have Republicans and obviously Democrats as well, [0:55] but Republicans who are afraid of their own shadow because it's an election year. [0:59] You know, they keep telling me that they can't do it. [1:02] They can do it. [1:03] I mean, we designed it last year. [1:05] We can design such a bill again this year. [1:07] The president's preoccupied with the war as he must. [1:09] I don't think he's really focused on this yet. [1:11] And perhaps he will be more focused on it in the days and weeks ahead. [1:15] But, Miranda, I mean, for example, everybody, I mean, even Democrats, [1:20] but everybody wants a voting rights reform bill. [1:22] Yeah. [1:23] All right? [1:23] Everybody wants. [1:23] Photo ID, citizenship, bare minimum, everybody wants. [1:27] Why isn't that in the bill? [1:28] Why not have more tax cuts? [1:30] Every time Republicans cut taxes, they win. [1:32] I mean, you just can bank on it. [1:34] Go back in history. [1:35] When they don't cut taxes, they lose. [1:38] What about the—you interviewed in your podcast, Mehmet Oz, okay? [1:42] He's got $100 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse in those hospices and whatnot in Los Angeles alone. [1:48] The rest of the country has got hundreds more. [1:51] Elon Musk and Doge identified $400 or $500 billion worth of fraud and waste, [1:58] which could be in a budget to offset anything they want to offset. [2:02] that it's so popular, and no one is talking about that. [2:05] It's like it never happened. [2:06] What's wrong with them? [2:07] It's so infuriating, and you've got Republicans in the Senate in particular [2:12] who are not just afraid of their own shadow, they absolutely are, [2:16] but they are willing to be held hostage by these very subpar Democrats [2:20] who are not the Democrats of old. [2:22] They are these new radical Democrats who don't care what damage they do to the country [2:27] as long as they get power. [2:29] And the Republicans rolling over to them, it's like what Winston Churchill said [2:34] about feeding a crocodile, hoping that he'll eat you last. [2:38] This is what they're doing. [2:39] And the Democrats, as if anything they do is going to stop another shutdown. [2:44] The Democrats pull shutdowns for any reason, [2:47] because what they know it does is it disrupts the function of government. [2:51] Whatever anyone says, you can tell when you go to Washington. [2:55] They're operating on skeleton staffs. [2:57] They can't get anything done. [2:58] The shutdown does shut things down, [3:01] even though they put forward a manful sort of facade on business as usual. [3:07] It's not. [3:07] And the Democrats know that. [3:09] And they hurt growth every time they shut it down. [3:12] So the Republicans have to just go in, guns blazing, [3:16] and be courageous for once. [3:19] But I think that they don't want Trump to do well. [3:22] I think that there are Senate Republicans who are quite happy to sit back on their, you know, [3:28] they know that they'll be there long after Trump's gone. [3:31] Yes, but if that's true, if this is all they come up with, okay? [3:35] Now, I'm for border security. [3:36] Don't get me wrong. [3:38] I mean, everyone at this table is for border security. [3:40] Everyone at this table wants to enforce the immigration laws. [3:42] I understand that. [3:44] But that's just one piece. [3:45] You can't, the whole, look, take voting rights. [3:48] Everyone wants voting rights reform. [3:51] The Republicans are all telling me, [3:52] I heard it again last evening from Shirley Moore Capito. [3:55] She's a good woman, I've known her a long time, [3:57] good senator, first rate, in the leadership. [3:59] I can't, we can't do it, we can't do it. [4:01] You can do it. [4:02] Those are rules that require funding. [4:06] They will require financing rules to run and administer a national election. [4:11] Therefore, it's worth a try. [4:13] Stay with me on this, Charlie. [4:15] It's worth a try to come up with language [4:17] that would fit the Byrd rule and the budget rules [4:21] and the reconciliation rules so the parliamentarian would consider it. [4:25] Why not try? [4:26] They're saying I can't. [4:28] They're not even talking about it. [4:30] I want to, Steve Forbes and I and Art Laffer and Steve Moore and others, [4:34] why, for 40 years we've said you should inflation index capital gains. [4:39] If you own a home or a stock for 40 years, [4:43] why should you pay the inflation portion of the tax? [4:47] That's not, that's only the real portion. [4:49] The rest of it's just an illusion. [4:51] Why not fix that? [4:52] Why not give middle-income taxpayers a lower marginal tax rate, for heaven's sakes? [4:57] And why not finance it? [4:58] Whatever happened to Doge? [5:00] Whatever happened to Doge? [5:01] You've got, the Emmett Oz thing is so interesting to me [5:04] because he's doing great. [5:06] You're covering it. [5:07] He's on the air. [5:08] He's a smart guy, okay? [5:09] Multiply that by 10 or 20, you've got yourself a downsized federal bureaucracy. [5:16] Why aren't they doing that? [5:18] Look, I'm respectful of the fact that the Senate has some parliamentary tricks that they've got to get around. [5:23] I get that. [5:23] But I'm sorry, who does the parliamentarian work for? [5:26] Is that some king that was sent by God down to make these determinations? [5:31] No. [5:32] All of these things are made by, determinations are made by the organizing principles of the members that have been elected by the states and by the people in the states. [5:43] So it's all ridiculous. [5:46] And I, you know, and by the way, on the DHS stuff, they're just looking to pay for, fund the stuff that's already been funded. [5:54] I know. [5:54] That's not the issue. [5:55] Isn't that the weird thing? [5:55] You are so right. [5:56] There's plenty of money from the one big, beautiful bill to keep all that off. [6:01] Yeah. [6:01] What's starving is the rest of DHS. [6:04] That's running out of money, but this bill wouldn't help them. [6:07] And by the way, that's the part that most people have been most... [6:10] TSA, FEMA, Coast Guard. [6:13] But here's the other thing. [6:14] On the voter ID bill, you know, that is a perfect example where Democrat, every Democrat in the land was fighting against that thing, calling it racist, Jim Crow 2.0. [6:25] That is a very popular bill. [6:27] And a lot of Democrats have come to realize that this is a very dangerous thing to oppose. [6:32] That's called winning at politics. [6:34] So keep doing that. [6:36] Right. [6:36] Let's make them vote on it. [6:37] Yes. [6:38] Let's make them vote on it. [6:39] Let's make them vote on it. [6:39] Let's make them vote on it. [6:39] Let's make them vote on it. [6:39] Go ahead. [6:40] Go ahead. [6:40] Make my day. [6:41] Vote against it. [6:42] We just keep doing this up and down until we get it right. [6:45] Miranda, I'm going to move back to New York City. [6:47] I have to. [6:48] Here we all are. [6:49] Uh-oh. [6:49] So this Ken Griffin story, billionaire, hedge fund manager, very smart guy. [6:54] Mondami sneers at him, and he sneers at his apartment. [6:58] And meanwhile, Griffith is trying to rebuild businesses that would probably hire 20,000, [7:04] 25,000 New Yorkers, good construction and manufacturing jobs, and they want to throw them out. [7:10] And that's the stupidity of Mondami. [7:13] It is. [7:13] Just saying. [7:14] The vanity of Mondami. [7:15] Ken Griffin. [7:15] And also the sinister motivations. [7:19] You know, the fact he goes outside this man's home. [7:23] Yeah. [7:23] And he, this is the politician, the boss of New York, and he publicly doxes him and threatens him. [7:32] And Ken Griffin, it will just be one of many. [7:34] I mean, he's just the most outspoken. [7:36] He's a tough guy. [7:38] He's come out all guns blazing against Mamdani, and so I'm going to pull my $60 million project. [7:43] Yeah, that's it. [7:43] Yeah. [7:43] But, I mean, every other billionaire, every other business owner in this country looks at that, [7:50] in this city, looks at that, and goes, I don't want to be next. [7:53] So they're going to preemptively pull out. [7:56] And I don't know what you do. [7:57] How do you save New York when you've got a mayor that's hell-bent on destroying it? [8:02] You can't save New York. [8:04] That's the problem. [8:05] Do they want to save New York? [8:06] I don't think any of them really care. [8:09] Hochul, Governor Hochul, she's got this, what is it, Pierre d'Au-terre tax that she wants. [8:14] He's just throwing people out of here. [8:16] They don't, you know what it is? [8:18] Wealthy, successful people are wealthy and successful because they created businesses and jobs [8:25] and things that people use. [8:27] You know, that's how society advances. [8:30] They built New York. [8:31] And they don't, and socialism does just wave mess. [8:33] Well, maybe Bruce Blakeman, this will be good for Bruce Blakeman. [8:36] Yeah, yeah. [8:37] Last one. [8:38] I got to do this Southern Poverty Legal Center business. [8:41] So, Charlie, let me get this right. [8:44] They took their money. [8:45] This is supposedly a civil rights organization, and created, created the Charlottesville, Virginia [8:54] flap of 2017, which Joe Biden used to run for president. [8:58] Okay, they created that. [9:00] They gave money to the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups on the far, far, far, far right that nobody favors. [9:08] I don't, I mean, how can they not go to jail? [9:11] So, this is a, it's a moral perversion and a financial perversion and a political perversion as well. [9:17] So, not one word of what you just said is either hyperbole or opinion. [9:23] It is all factual. [9:24] They actually did that. [9:25] And this is an organization with a, what, three quarter billion dollar endowment. [9:31] They are funding, they're seeding, they're encouraging, they're hiring people to put on [9:37] things like the Charlottesville event, which, as you say, sparked Joe Biden's campaign. [9:45] They are doing whatever they can to foster racism and division in this country. [9:49] And they do it because it's a very good business model for them. [9:55] But I think that it's really interesting. [9:56] I love watching all these Democrat politicians defend these people [9:59] because the Democrat party for 150 years has been the party of racism in this country. [10:05] And the fact that they are, their true colors have been revealed by all of this. [10:09] And I think that it is a wonderful comeuppance to them. [10:12] You know, that's such an interesting point. [10:14] I know the producers are yelling over time, but Mark Levin makes the same point. [10:19] It's very, when you, when you go back to Woodrow Wilson, when you go back to FDR, [10:25] when you go back to a lot of Democrats, they were the hate party. [10:29] They were the anti-Semitic party. [10:32] They were the anti-Black party. [10:33] You read, you know, there's so much truth to that. [10:36] And do you know how awful it would be if kids that lived in Democrat cities across the country [10:42] picked up a history book and were taught how to read and learned how to read and read that? [10:47] Maybe Democrats don't want people to learn how to read because they're perfectly content [10:52] keeping their long, dark secret in the past. [10:57] 100%. [10:57] I hope they really bust this poverty center. [11:00] I do, too. [11:00] They are a bunch of bigots. [11:02] And the whole Democratic Party used that Charlottesville, Virginia flap [11:06] to run on against Trump and democracy and all the rest of it. [11:10] And it was completely bogus. [11:11] And it was set up by a bogus group of haters themselves. [11:14] Miranda Devine, Charlie Hurt, thank you ever so much.