Trump's Oval Office Q&A and Bernie's betrayal (03-21-2025--Hour1)

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[00:00:29] Donald Trump is doing a Q&A in the Oval Office after he announced the winning bidder for the F-47. I don't know if that's purely coincidental that he's also 47th president, but the new fighter jet. But now he's taking questions that are all over the place. At one point, he called Tim Walls a loser, which is fact check true. And so let's see here. Next question.

[00:00:54] Can you talk about Canada becoming the 51st state? Are you concerned if they became the 51st state, they would be a very, very blue state? Very, very vague and very, very blue. No, they might be, but it would, you know, you have that artificial line that goes, that straight artificial, that looked like it was drawn by a ruler. Somebody with a, I don't mean a ruler like a king, I mean like a ruler like a ruler. This way.

[00:01:19] Yeah. And it's just an artificial line that was drawn in the sand or in the ice. Can I tell Peter, just you, you add that to this country. What a beautiful landmass, the most beautiful landmass anywhere in the world. And it was just cut off for whatever reason. It would be great. Now, is it liberal? Maybe. Maybe. But, you know, a conservative until I got involved, because I don't care who wins up there.

[00:01:46] I frankly probably would do better with a liberal than the conservative if you want to know the truth. But just a little while ago before I got involved and totally changed the election, which I don't care about. Right. Towards the liberals. Probably it's our advantage, actually. But the conservative was leading against, I call him Governor Trudeau. Well, the conservative was leading. Yeah, Pierre, Olivier, Olivier or whatever. So I don't know about that. I think Canada is a place like a lot of other places.

[00:02:14] If you have a good candidate, the candidate's going to win. And the two astronauts that you just helped save from space, they didn't get any overtime pay for all that extra time. They got $5 a day per diem. For 286 days, that is $1,430 in extra pay. Is there anything the administration can do to get them, to make them whole?

[00:02:39] Well, nobody's ever mentioned this to me. If I have to, I'll pay it out of my own pocket. Okay? I'll get it for us. Mr. President, I'll take care of that. I like that. I think that. I'll pay it right out of my... Is that all? That's not a lot for what they had to go through. And I want to thank Elon Musk, by the way, because think if we don't have him. You know, there's only so long, even though they're in the capsule up there, that the body starts to deteriorate after nine or ten months

[00:03:07] and gets really bad after 14, 15 months with the bones and the blood and all the things that you've been reporting on very well. And if we don't have Elon, they could be up there a long time. Who else is going to get him? And I just want to thank him. He's going through a lot, what they're doing to him. And these people are going to be caught, and they're going to be caught, and they're going to be prosecuted. And from what they tell me, I see this just by watching your programs and reading the news.

[00:03:37] But from what they tell me, they could get 20 years in jail, and they'll get it. I'll tell you, there's going to be no leniency, and there'll be no pardons. I can tell you that right now. And you said this morning 20 years in jail, and then maybe they'll go to one of these prisons in El Salvador. Do you think with the way that the judges have been issuing injunctions, it would be easier or harder to send these Tesla domestic terrorists to a jail in El Salvador than these MS-13 or Trendy arrival guys?

[00:04:05] Well, I view these people as terrorists just like others. When I looked at those showrooms burning and those cars, not one or two, like seven, eight, ten burning, exploding all over the place. These are terrorists. You didn't have that on January 6th, I can tell you. You didn't have anything like that on January 6th, which is sort of amazing, because on January 6th, the Democrats were talking.

[00:04:31] Nobody was killed other than a very beautiful young woman, Ashley Babbitt. Nobody was killed. And you look at what's going on now with these terrorists. These are terrorists, and that's an organized event. You know, take a look at their signs. Take a look. They're all made by the same sign company. A nice expensive job. Now, these are the people that finance it are, in my opinion, in just as big a trouble as the people that are setting the match and setting the fires.

[00:05:00] So we'll see. It's under very serious investigation by the FBI and by the Justice Department. These people are terrorists. Okay. Mr. President, what do you say to American military families who are seeing Elon Musk at the Pentagon today are hearing about Defense Department cuts, and their thoughts are immediately going to the safety of their loved ones who are currently employed? Well, we're making our country strong.

[00:05:26] And when they see a thing like that and they hear that story about Elon and China, what they should do is realize that the New York Times is a corrupt institution, because I think they're the ones. They knew that story wasn't true. Nobody believed that story. People that, when I first caught it, they laughed when they heard this story. Nobody believed it. That the Pentagon was giving him a briefing on what war with China would look like. And he has business. No, they made that up because it's a good story to make up.

[00:05:54] They're very dishonest people. Look, I have it with the Times, and you'll see more and more of it. But to me, it's a very, very dishonest organization. But a story like that is made up. It's total fiction. And I just wanted to make sure. I called up Chief of Staff, and I called up Pete, and I said, is there any truth to that? Absolutely not. He's there for Doge, not there for China.

[00:06:22] And if you ever mention China, I think he'd walk out of the room. He wouldn't take it anyway. So it's just a made-up story. Nobody's taking better care of the military. One of the things that I know that Pete's doing is he's talking about a lot of the civilian staff, and we're going to get them other jobs. You know, we're going to have a lot of jobs in this country, but we don't want to have wasteful jobs. We want to have meaningful jobs. And those were wasteful jobs.

[00:06:49] Those are jobs that not only military, but jobs where people don't show up. We had, you take a look at Department of Education. I've never seen so many buildings with the names on it. You go past one after another, Department of Education, and they're empty. The people don't show up. You know why? Because they have other jobs, because they're playing golf, or they're playing something. They're doing something. And we have a lot of great people, but we have to move that back to the States. We're going to make our country strong, and we're going to get people much better jobs,

[00:07:19] because we have companies moving into our country the likes of which we've never seen before. Nothing like this has happened. And it's automatic. They don't want to pay the tariffs. How do you avoid paying the tariffs? You build your plant in the United States, and it's a beautiful thing to see. I see it. So far, I would say $4 trillion. Nobody's ever heard of numbers. No country's ever heard of numbers like that. $4 trillion. And those are the best ones.

[00:07:49] The biggest, best chipmaker in the world. I don't, I'm not a fan of the Chip Act, where you give billions away to, billions of dollars away to companies that don't need it, and it won't bring them here. I'm giving nothing away. All they're doing is coming here. They're building because they want to avoid. Remember this on the tariffs, too, because that's going to be, you know, Liberation Day, April 2nd. It's reciprocal. If they charge us, we charge them. So somebody would say, well, how much are the tariffs? Very fair.

[00:08:20] If India, as an example, has been very bad to us on tariffs, they charge 100%, 200%, whatever they charge. Now, Europe just announced they're lowering the tariffs on cars. You know, we charge, like a joke, 2.5%. That's what this country charges. Europe just announced that they're reducing their tariffs on cars to 2.5%. It's nice. But they also have non-monetary tariffs, where they make it impossible for the cars to get

[00:08:50] in, even without the dollars on them and the dollar signs. It's called a non-monetary tariff, where they put on controls where no matter what happens, because they don't want cars, they don't want the American car in their market, and yet they send us millions of cars. They send us big agriculture. They don't want our agriculture. They don't want anything from us. European Union's very tough, but now it's fair. So whatever they do to us, we do to them. All right.

[00:09:16] So Donald Trump is in the Oval Office, obviously just taking questions from the media on whatever the reporters can think to ask him. So that's happening now. If there's anything else of import that comes out of it, I will endeavor to bring it to you. All right. So spring is here, a time of renewal and celebrations. You got graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime.

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[00:10:38] F-47, the new fighter plane, talked about cracking down on domestic terrorists, talked about Elon Musk and how crappy the New York Times story is, and apparently they're now stealth editing their headline because, no, the Pentagon did not give Elon access to some secret Chinese war plan or the war on China or something. It's very similar. You know what it reminded me of was the Carter Page smear.

[00:11:08] Remember that? Carter Page, business guy, Trump advisor, went over to Russia, came back, talked to the CIA, as he apparently had done repeatedly over the course of his career because he's a patriot and he would tell the CIA, hey, this is what the Russians talk to me about. This is what they're interested in, whatever. You know, here's the business dealings. Here are the people I met, whatever. And then when the FBI was looking to target Donald Trump and they found Carter Page's

[00:11:36] visits to Russia, they were like, oh, this is it. And so as his protocol, they have to reach out to other intel agencies like the CIA and say, hey, just to make sure he's not one of you, he's not one of your assets, is he? And the CIA said, actually, yes, he's been working with us for a while. And that's when the FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, I believe, that's when he left that out of the documentation when they filed the warrant application in the FISA court.

[00:12:05] Because if the court had known that Carter Page was working with the CIA on stuff, then the court would have been like, oh, well, that explains why he would be going to Russia. Russia, he's talking to the CIA after. So no, you can't, you don't have probable cause basically to wiretap his stuff. But if you omit that fact, now it's like, oh, look at this. He's going to Russia all these times. We need to figure it out. Is Trump a puppet of Putin, right? And that's how they did it.

[00:12:34] And that's what it kind of smacks of, this, the wrap-up smear, right, as Nancy Pelosi called it. So Trump also said that he would pay the overtime pay for the astronauts. I don't know. I was unaware of this. Peter Doocy asked Trump during this Q&A in the Oval Office and asked him, hey, these astronauts were up there and they apparently don't get overtime pay.

[00:13:01] They were supposed to be up there for a three-hour tour, I believe. A three-hour tour. A three-hour tour. And ended up being up there for like nine months. I feel like that should be overtime pay, right? No? I mean, that seems fair. But apparently they're not eligible for the overtime pay. And so Trump wasn't aware of that either before the question, he said. And so he was like, well, like they only get five bucks an hour. So they're only getting like $1,400 for being up there for eight or nine months.

[00:13:31] So he said, yeah, that will look into it. And if I have to pay it myself, I'll pay it myself. So I don't know. We'll see what happens. We shall see what happens. What else? Oh, Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders has for a very long time, you know, tried to position himself as not of the Democrat Party. Kind of of the Democrat Party. I'll caucus with you guys. I'll vote with you guys. I agree with you on a whole bunch of stuff.

[00:14:00] But I am a socialist. I'm an independent. And so, therefore, I'm not going to be a registered Democrat. I'm going to run for president on the Democrat ticket. But I'm not of you. I'm Democrat adjacent. Right. And as Ed Morrissey says, Sanders has tried to distance himself from the party while simultaneously attempting to seize control of it. Now, the New York Times reports.

[00:14:27] And again, this is the New York Times or as Donald Trump calls it, the failing, corrupt New York Times reports that Sanders is now urging progressives to run in elections as independents rather than Democrats. That would create an actual split in the party. Right. This is not in a primary.

[00:14:53] This is in a general, because if you are a, quote, independent, then you would not be running in the Democrat primary. So he's saying, hey, all you Bernie bros, when you're not out there trying to assassinate all of the Republicans on a softball field like that guy Hodgkinson did, then you need to be running for office as independents or socialists. Right. In the general election, New York Times, here's their report. Or a part of it.

[00:15:22] Sanders's admonition came in an interview with The New York Times on the eve of a three day, five city swing through Western states alongside Representative Alexandria Cazocortez of New York. He predicted that they would draw tens of thousands of people to rally against President Trump, Elon Musk and the influence of the billionaires on the American government. The suggestion that would be leaders of the left should abandon the Democrat Party picks at a political scab that has never fully healed.

[00:15:52] Sanders, who is 83 years old, a longtime independent, has had a tense yet codependent relationship with the party for decades. And Ed Morrissey asks a very important question. Is this a tactic to simply ramp up the pressure on Chuck Schumer to resign? Is that what this is designed to do? And does he then backtrack, much like he did with Hillary Clinton? Right.

[00:16:22] When he's like, I'm going to run for president against Hillary Clinton. And then the next debate, it's I'm tired of hearing about her emails. Right. So he's sort of a controlled opposition inside the Democrat Party. Is that what he's doing? There's more to this. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know, I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do, too. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why?

[00:16:51] Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place. So you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description, too.

[00:17:12] I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The Blind Spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check.ground.news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.

[00:17:38] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. All right. Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com writing about Bernie Sanders is a call for, quote, independence. His his followers to start running for offices against Democrats and Republicans in general elections.

[00:18:04] Do not call this a civil war, people. This is merely Democrats in disarray. OK. Only the Republicans have a civil war inside their ranks. This would go beyond just challenging establishment Democrat incumbents in primaries. Morrissey writes if Sanders convinces progressives to run as independents in most states, they would have to do so in the general elections.

[00:18:29] They would then run against Democrats and Republicans, likely splitting voters on the left while allowing right leaning voters to unite behind the GOP nominee. That would portend an absolute disaster for Democrats, essentially forcing a party split. Or. Or. It solidifies a more moderate Democrat Party.

[00:18:57] See, I'm what do I always tell you? Rule number one about Marxists is that they lie. Right. And Bernie, being a Marxist, he lies. So you don't know what the actual motivation is here. He could be, as I said earlier, controlled opposition inside the Democrat Party. He's like a pressure release valve.

[00:19:22] So you've got a lot of people on the left, a lot of leftists inside the Democrat Party that are really, really mad at Chuck Schumer. And they're really mad at other Democrats who aren't, you know, pushing back hard enough against Donald Trump. Like, I guess we need to burn more car dealerships or something. I don't know.

[00:19:41] But if Bernie is there to offer that sort of a pressure release valve to the leftists, and then that may empower the more moderates in the Democrat Party to, like, rise and then ostracize some of these more leftist candidates. I don't know. That's what I mean.

[00:20:09] Like, all of this is just speculation on my part, just trying to kind of game it out in my head. And I'm just operating under this, you know, guiding principle that commies lie. And Bernie's a commie. So I, like, I cannot trust. I cannot trust him. And Ed Morrissey says one has to wonder what Sanders envisions the outcome of this strategy is, right?

[00:20:34] You have to wonder just how many progressives Bernie is going to convince to commit electoral suicide, right? But maybe that's the point. You run for these offices. You get blown out badly. You cost Democrats elections. You then get blackballed, right? Maybe that's the point.

[00:20:55] If the party establishment finds less radical alternatives, though, they might hold the deep blue districts even with a split on the ticket. And then that might actually rid themselves of the toxic influence of the cultural political Marxists for a while. Because the other thing about Bernie is that he's lazy. He always has been.

[00:21:21] Remember, this is the guy that got kicked out of a commie commune because he wasn't doing anything, which is very on brand for commies, right? I mean, that's kind of their jam. They're lazy. They don't want to do the work. And so they just want to kind of, you know, parasitically siphon off of the productive people in the commune. So maybe this is just, you know, him saying, hey, you go out and run. You go out and run. You split these votes. And meanwhile, he's just leading them to the slaughter. Rhetorically speaking.

[00:21:52] Then there's this over at Politico. As Democrat Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer knows better than anybody, the Democrat base is hacked off. And not just a little bit. Not just a little bit. They're very, very mad. Related to this, actually, is an NBC News poll. Have you heard this?

[00:22:16] Voters' opinions of Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Elon Musk, Doge, the GOP, Zelensky, DEI, and the Democrat Party. And NBC asked this. This breakdown is demographically of white people, white men, white women. So I was unaware, actually, that NBC News is now of the opinion that there are only men and women.

[00:22:40] But anyway, so white men, white women with a college degree and without a college degree. And the results here show uniformity, if you will, a general agreement. Not on everything. And there are definitely some gaps here.

[00:22:57] But among white men with no degree, white men with a degree, white women with no degree, there is more cohesion around political favorability on those items that I listed. Those three demographic groups, white dudes with and without degrees and white women without degrees.

[00:23:22] And then there's this one outlier off to the side, which is white women with college degrees. And they are in like another, they're not even on another planet. They're in another universe. It's not even close to any of these other groups. It's crazy. Here's a great idea. Yep. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina, just a quick drive up the mountain?

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[00:24:46] And they have pet-friendly accommodations. Call or text 828-367-7068. Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Politico reporting the intensity of the anger roiling the Democrat Party is at a historic level, suggesting a breach between congressional Democrats and the party grassroots so severe that it could reshape the 2026 primary election season.

[00:25:14] Once again, this is speculative. We don't know. As so much journalism is nowadays. But I suspect part of the problem that Democrats have here is borne out in this NBC News poll. So voters' opinions of Donald Trump. White men, 41%. White men with no degree is a plus 41. Okay, so white guys without a college degree overwhelmingly support Donald Trump.

[00:25:44] White men with a college degree are plus 1 Donald Trump. White women, no degree, plus 14 for Donald Trump favorability. White women with a college degree, negative 38. This is like the most hyper-partisan cohort. J.D. Vance, similar numbers. Elon Musk, similar numbers. Doge, similar swings.

[00:26:12] Republican Party, similar swings. Vladimir Zelensky, white men with no degree, negative 5 for Zelensky. White men with a degree, plus 11 for Zelensky. White women, no degree, minus 3. White women with a college degree, plus 53. What is the deal with that?

[00:26:39] What's up with the white college-degreed women loving on Zelensky? DEI, same sort of swings. I mean, they're not even close to their fellow white women without degrees or their white male-degreed counterparts. Like, DEI is negative. It's underwater in every category, except white women with college degrees.

[00:27:08] That's the base now of the Democrat Party. Congressional Democrats have typically enjoyed higher popularity with their voting base than their Republican counterparts. But the trauma of the 2024 presidential election defeat appears to have ruptured that relationship. A review of Quinnipiac University's annual first-quarter congressional polling reveals that for the first time in the poll's history,

[00:27:34] congressional Democrats are now underwater with their own voters. In approval ratings, just 40% of Democrats approve of the job performance of congressional Democrats, compared to 49% who disapprove of their own party's congressional performance. That is a dramatic change from the same time last year.

[00:28:01] Now, obviously, that would have been before the election, when 75% of Democrats approved and 21% disapproved of their own party's members of Congress. Politico says this is eerily reminiscent of the Republican grassroots sentiment in the period leading up to Donald Trump's takeover of the Republican Party. The numbers are clear.

[00:28:23] No longer satisfied with the status quo in their party, Democrats are on the verge of a Tea Party-style intra-party revolt. What have I been saying? The parties are realigning. And the Democrat Party is apparently not going to be able to keep a hold of dudes.

[00:28:46] It's going to become a female-dominated, a college-educated white female and black female college- and non-college-educated demographic cohort. That's where it looks like this is going. And that's not good for the society. And it's not good. Now, I don't think there's a critical mass with this kind of a breakdown for Democrats to ever actually then win again.

[00:29:14] That's a problem for the party, right? If they can't win. And if they cannot keep men, particularly white men and even, to a lesser extent, black men and Hispanic men who have also started jumping ship from the Democrat Party. So you're losing these men. But that means you're losing these different racial categories, these different cohorts.

[00:29:43] And what have I said for years? That when the Democrat or the, yeah, when the Democrat Party no longer attracts the 90-plus percent of black vote that it enjoys right now. When black voters start voting like all of the other racial demographics do, the Democrat Party is done. They can't win.

[00:30:32] They're not going to be able to compete to control the U.S. House. This is a very big problem for Democrats. And they seem completely incapable of addressing it. I played the clip yesterday. Tim Walz, the VP nominee who was supposed to attract all of the rural dudes and just came across as really weird and effeminate. Right? They don't even know how to start the conversation. Oh, by the way, somebody did take him up on his offer for a fight. I'll tell you in a minute. All right.

[00:31:02] That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalendorshow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening. And don't break anything while I'm gone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.