The Dan Bongino Show - Are Trump's Budget Cuts Bills The Best Way To Do It? | Episode 57

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

The first of many rescission packages has found its way to Congress. The debate starts at its efficacy first, and to the chance of it being passed, second. Also in this episode: David Strom, Associate Editor of HotAir, joins to discuss the mental health ratings of conservatives versus liberals and much more. White House Sends Congress $9.4 Billion Rescissions Package https://dailycaller.com/2025/06/03/white-house-sends-congress-rescissions-package-trump-npr-pbs/ Trump's Justice Department examining pardons issued by Biden https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-justice-department-examining-pardons-issued-by-biden-2025-06-02/ Murder Rates Plummet Under President Trump https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/06/03/murder-rates-plummet-under-president-trump/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, welcome to Vince. Good to have you with us today. On a Wednesday, boy, we've got a big, beautiful bill to talk about. We're gonna do that today. I wanna get into the details of this. People don't appreciate what the hell is in this thing. I'm gonna give you some appreciation of it,

and by the end of it, you are going to absolutely be rooting on the passage of this big, beautiful bill. Hold tight for that. Always appreciate you joining us live, rumble.com slash Vince. And on the podcast, wherever you get a podcast, thank you for that. It's a big, beautiful bill. Hold tight for that. Always appreciate you joining us live, rumble.com slash Vince. And on the podcast, wherever you get a podcast, thank you for that. It's a big show. And I've got Hot Air's David Strom also joining us today.

Got a lot to talk about with him. Before we get there, gotta thank the sponsors of this great program who make it all possible. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Birch Gold. The administration has their sleeves rolled up and they're streamlining monumental moves right now, but it's difficult for them to take your personal finances into account when trying to fix the country.

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or just buy some to store at home. Just text my name, Vince, to 989898, and Birch Gold is going to send you a free info kit on gold. There's no obligation, only useful information. With an A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, thousands of happy customers protect your savings today. Text the word VINCE to 989898. Data and message rates apply. All right, so there's a lot of debate going on right now about the big, beautiful bill. And we saw an attack by Elon Musk yesterday against this thing.

Elon Musk comes out and says that this thing is a betrayal and it's loaded up with pork and we can't pass this and shame on anyone who supported it in the first place. And when you get a statement like that from Elon Musk knocking the big, beautiful bill, you take it seriously and rightfully so you take it seriously because this is a guy who obviously fought for free speech that that's been a core element of Elon Musk's presence and contribution to the country by buying Twitter turning it into X and making it a free speech platform love that love

that he's also a guy that the president brought into the fold as both a donor, a contributor, and a guy who helped push President Trump across the finish line, making that election too big to rig and putting his own fortune on the line in order to see that happen, comes in and then runs

the Department of Government efficiency. The goal there as they started out was to cut trillions of dollars in spending and waste and fraud inside of the government. Over time, as they started out was to cut trillions of dollars in spending and waste and fraud inside of the government. Over time as they were tackling all of this, by the end of Elon's time in that tenure, they cut in the vicinity of $150 billion, but I'll take anything I can get. And the spending that they were finding was cartoonish.

It was out of control. Transgender comic books in Peru and ridiculous social media garbage in Ethiopia or whatever. The whole point is there was a massive massive slush fund that Elon Musk got a hold of including at places like USAID and said we're cutting that funding. We're cutting it right now. So they did. They stopped spending the money. But stopping that from all from happening, it needs to go beyond just stopping the spending now. We need to statutorily remove that spending going forward. So there are two really important and distinct things going on now. One is the big, beautiful bill. I want to remind you of how we got to one big, beautiful bill. I wanna remind you of how we got to one big, beautiful bill. How we got to just one.

President Trump, when he was running for office and during the presidential transition period, said, look, we're gonna pass my agenda and it's gonna take either one or maybe two beautiful bills. In the end, he settled on one. One big, beautiful bill. Now, instinctively, reflexively,

you and I recoil at gigantic pieces of legislation. We see giant legislation and we instantly detect there's corruption going on, that there's a game afoot, that we're being taken advantage of here. How dare you try and ram all this through together in one giant piece of legislation. And your instincts are right. It is good to have that instinct. But let me remind you

about the vehicle here and why President Trump independently selected this, why he chose one big, beautiful bill in order to do this. The answer is because it's reconciliation. That's the vehicle that we're doing this through. In the United States Senate, in order to pass anything, any normal piece of legislation that you would present would require a super majority, 60 votes to pass because of the Democrats' obstruction in the Senate. Democrats don't want to help you achieve anything. And so this can only be done with Republican votes.

The only way forward is with Republican votes. And so that's why this is being done through the reconciliation process. And in order to get the president's agenda passed, in order to get all of the things that you and I voted for, the only way it's gonna get through is with a simple majority vote in the United States Senate. And there are only two categories of things

that can be passed with a simple majority vote. One, a reconciliation package. The other rescissions, rescissions, that are, those are spending cuts, getting rid of spending that Congress has already said, hey, you should spend this money, Mr. President. And the president says, I don't need to, I don't want to. And in fact, I want you to officially cut this

out of the federal government's budget. We're not spending this anymore. So yesterday, the White House sent over the first rescissions package. The first, this one is for $9 billion. Now, is that the biggest sum of money you've ever heard of? No, it's not. But it's meaningful.

These are cuts to USAID. These are cuts to NPR. These are cuts to PBS. It needs to happen. And in fact, it's basically a starter pack for the United States Congress. Let's see, are you actually gonna cut something? Well, then we're gonna present you with this.

That's the plan. So they send the White House sends over to Congress yesterday evening nine billion dollars in spending cuts. Now, Steve Scalise right now in the Congress and the leadership in the Congress in the House says that they're going to vote on this next week. Now, I'm not satisfied by next week. I want last night.

I want today, this morning. I want these cuts done now. But they say they're doing them next week. They're gonna work, they're gonna pass these through the House, and presumably they're gonna pass them through the Senate. If they know what's good for them, they'll pass them through the Senate.

That move, a rescission's request by the White House, it starts a 45-day clock, a 45-day clock by statute. If Congress fails to deliver those spending cuts, well, that money is supposed to be spent for the rest of the fiscal year. And the president can't send another rescissions package on USAID and on NPR and on PBS. He loses that opportunity after Congress fails to act on this. So they can't fail. They can't fail. The pressure needs to be on today. You

and me and everybody you know, we should be pressuring the hell out of these members of Congress. Cut, cut, cut. When the president sends you cuts, take them up on it. Take them up on it. $9 billion. This is easy street. Let's make this spending cut right now. So this is the beginning. This is the beginning of these massive spending cuts. Now I also want to get back to the big beautiful bill here because there's so much that's misunderstood about this. Helpfully, the White House, if we can put this on screen, and fellas, as I'm talking

for our great video crew down in Florida, for whatever reason, I can't see any program feedback on my lower monitor here, which normally lets me see what everything looks like. I'm just trusting you with this because I just can't see it. But on on the on the White House website, I'm seeing 50 wins in the one big beautiful bill. And you know, you and I we've had this conversation, you know, we talked about the basics here. There are, you know, we're making permanent the Trump tax cuts from 2017. We're making permanent the 2017 Trump tax cuts. You know what that means? That means we're preventing a 22% tax hike

on the American people. A massive, massive tax hike on the American people. What do you think that would do to the economy if we had a 22% tax hike on you, on me, on everybody you know? It would stagger it. It would throw us the economy. If we had a 22% tax hike on you, on me, on everybody you know, it would stagger it. It would throw us into recession. It would destroy us to have a 22% tax hike. That's insanity. That can't happen. And by the way, when Democrats vote against this package in the Senate, just like they did in the House, you will be able to say,

Republicans all the way up to the midterms, that Democrats voted for a 22% tax hike. How's that, American people? What do you think of that, American voter? I'm opposed to that. Also, of course, we get no tax on tips, we get no tax on overtime, and we get a massive deduction on Social Security. A massive deduction on Social Security. That's a technical quirk of being able to pass this through reconciliation. They didn't have any other options. They could only go with a deduction on Social Security. But it's meaningful. It provides a lot of tax relief, especially for seniors who are depending entirely on Social Security checks to get by.

Not having to pay taxes on that anymore. It's crazy that we charge people taxes for receiving Social Security checks back. It was already taken from them in the first place. Just give them their money. But here we are. But not only do we see a huge tax cut extended and added to by the Trump administration and by the Congress here if they pass it,

which by the way is why the CBO says it adds to the deficit. They claim tax cuts amount to government spending. They don't. Tax cuts generate revenue to the federal government. The CBO has lied to you about this subject. You know, in 2017 on Trump tax cuts, when those first ones were passed, do you know how wrong these guys were?

Do you know how wrong the CBO was? They got it wrong by half a trillion dollars. The government generated a half trillion dollars in revenue in just the first six years, the first six years of the new, of the Trump tax guys back in 2017. The CBO got it completely wrong and they're getting it completely wrong again.

So any Senator you see right now, anybody who's coming out and relying on the CBO score as a basis for saying, we can't pass this bill, they're lying. Or they themselves are being deceived, they shouldn't be, given how often the CBO has been wrong. Also, do you realize that this bill, does anyone know this?

The bill funds the entire border wall. Did you know that? The bill funds the entire border wall. Did you know that? The bill funds the entire border wall. This is huge. Not only does it fund the border wall, it increases funding for border patrol and ICE agents. That is a massive, massive thing. Also, we're getting money for detention space,

for the logistics for deporting people, the ability to have the planes to do it. You want mass deportations? The government's gotta be able to do it. We've gotta have the logistical means to do it. This is the single biggest border security package that's ever been presented to the Congress. It's the single biggest border security package that's ever been presented to the Congress. It's the single biggest deportation package that's ever been presented to the Congress.

Do you realize how big this is? Let me put this differently. How many times have you seen immigration bills presented to Congress? How many times? And go ahead, Chat, you tell me. If I ask for border security, what is the radical left asking for in return in order to make that deal?

If I say, I wanna secure the border, I want more people to deport the illegals from the country, what do they ask for in return every single time? Go ahead, tell me, Chad, I know somebody knows the answer to that. Ronald Reagan experienced this in the 1980s. They made this deal. He said, I want border security. What did they tell Reagan they wanted? Come on, I'm waiting for it. There it is. Soul powered gets it first. Amnesty. Amnesty,

amnesty, amnesty, every damn time. Amnesty is what these guys always demand in order to quote secure the border. Guess what is not in this package? Amnesty. There is no amnesty here. So wait a second. Hold on a second. So you're telling me that you're going to increase funding for ICE, you're going to increase the logistics for deportations, you're going to get to the level of mass deportations, you're going to fully build the border wall, you're gonna get to the level of mass deportations, you're gonna fully build the border wall, you're gonna secure our country with this legislation and there's no amnesty in this thing? Why Vince, why is there no amnesty? Because it only requires 51 votes in the Senate. I don't need the radical left to be a part of this equation. I don't need them. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm telling you,

you are looking at a piece of legislation that has within it so many of the priorities that you voted for, it boggles the mind. I know people are reflecting right now on the number of pages in this thing and saying, oh, there's a lot of pages and I didn't realize it's such a long bill. Well, yeah, no kidding.

The White House, I'm looking at this thing. What do they got? It delivers the largest tax cut in American history. It makes the Trump tax cuts permanent. It raises Americans' take-home pay by as much as $13,300 and wages by as much as $11,600. It reverses the spending curse plaguing D.C. The bill delivers the single largest deficit reduction in 30 years. $1.6 trillion in cuts over 10 years. And I gotta, let me tell you the other side of this.

$1.6 trillion in cuts. The bill's total expenditures, this includes the defense spending, the golden dome that President Trump is including, the spending on the border wall, the spending on ICE, all of that spending, that's $4 trillion of spending over 10 years, that's four, four. It includes $1.6 trillion in cuts to out of control federal spending.

Mandatory spending, by the way, that's how reconciliation works, it only tackles mandatory, the Doge cuts can't be a part of this. I don't know how many times I can tell you this, the Doge cuts cannot be a part of this. That's, that is considered discretionary spending. That's gotta be done through the appropriations process

or through rescissions, which I've already talked about. And so we're looking at what? 1.6 to 4 trillion, that's a $2.4 trillion gap. $2.4 trillion. And I already told you that the CBL underestimated the effect of tax cuts to the tune of nearly a trillion dollars over 10 years. So I just closed the gap again.

Now we're at 2.6 trillion dollars in deficit reduction. So the gap between 2.6 and 4, that's 1.4 trillion dollars. So now we're at something that's a lot more fiscally sensible if you think about this. Just the basic math that's involved here, a lot more fiscally sensible. And is it right to be concerned about the debt? Yeah, definitely. $37 trillion is out of control.

It is out of control. But let me give you an analogy. I want you to think about this. Cause this bill needs to be understood as a border security bill in a huge way. You're sitting around the kitchen table Dad ran up the credit card. He maxed it out. Your family's in a credit crunch right now. You're trying to figure out What are we gonna do?

Mom and dad are sitting there working through the details. How are we gonna make ends meet? How are we gonna get out of this? What tactics do we use? And while you're in the middle of this conversation People come blasting into your house. They're breaking the windows. They come running through the front door. They're grabbing anything they can inside of the home. They're robbing you. They're attacking you. So what does priority want?

You sit there and you keep yammering on about the debt? Well, how do we solve this little debt crisis? Or do you grab the gun? Do you get the invaders out of your home? The answer to that is, get the invaders out. Look, if we don't have borders, we don't have a country. If we don't have sovereignty in our own communities, we don't have a sovereign country.

We don't have a nation. That is, that is priority one. Getting control of the immigration crisis, the illegal invasion of our country that's taken place at the hands of the Biden administration. That's priority one. Getting control of the immigration crisis, the illegal invasion of our country that's taken place at the hands of the Biden administration. That's priority one. Does the debt matter? Oh, yes, it does.

Oh, it absolutely does. But get these people the hell out so we can spend some time cleaning up our own house. This matters deeply. This big, beautiful bill, what else does it include that nobody's talking about in the media? That the lies the media tells about this stuff are crazy. No tax on tips, no tax on overtime. Historic tax cuts for seniors

in the form of those massive deductions to social security. It finishes Trump's border wall, finishes the border wall. 701 miles of primary wall, 900 miles of river barriers, 629 miles of secondary barriers, and 141 miles of vehicle and pedestrian barriers to be constructed. You want the wall? Here it comes. It boosts the Border Patrol and ICE agents on the front lines. They want to hire 10,000 new ICE personnel, 5,000 new customs officers, 3,000 new border patrol agents to detain and deport at least a million illegals every single year. This is a big task. Biden

let in 20 million. All this bill is asking for is we just need to at least start deporting a million a year. We got to get this in place. It increases the child tax credit $2,500 per family $2,500. That means you keep more of your money, a lot more of your money. It protects Medicaid for people who actually need it, and it stops people from stealing it. You know who's stealing it? 1.4 million illegal aliens have been stealing Medicaid.

This puts an end to that. It puts work requirements on all sorts of taxpayer funded benefits. Look, we're here to help you, taxpayers are, but as a condition of that help you can't stay on this welfare forever. You've got to get gainfully employed, get to a situation where you're not on the welfare anymore. It makes common sense. It made sense in the 90s for welfare reform. It makes sense now. They eliminate hundreds of billion dollars in green new scam tax credits. The White House is phrasing for green new scam. What that means, of course, is the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.

It claws all of that garbage back. Stop wasting that money. That's where you see these cuts. It gets rid of electrical vehicle mandates. No more mandates. I do see some speculation that this is one of the reasons Elon is upset about this that the EV preferences are being taken out by the United States Congress. They need to

be let the free market dictate whether or not you buy an EV electric vehicles seem cool to me. But I don't think the government should have any hand in that whatsoever. It ends Biden's war on American energy. They're focusing on American energy development. It streamlines permitting so America can get back to building stuff again and quickly, not taking years because the government gets in the way. It refills the strategic petroleum reserve. Biden emptied it. We could use a strategic petroleum reserve, once again topped off at very cheap rates as the president gets energy up and running again.

It gets rid of all the green corporate garbage. It stops illegals from receiving any tax credits. And it taxes, how often have you asked for this? Have you heard about this at all? Did you know they are going to tax remittances that are sent to foreign countries? Remittance payments. So if an illegal alien comes to the United States, generates an income in the United States, and sends that money away to a foreign country, there are taxes on the remittances built into this. Nobody told you that. I'm telling you that.

The White House is telling you that. This bill gets better with every sentence I read about it. It supports small businesses by increasing their deductions. It incentivizes Made in America. It creates Trump savings accounts for newborns so that they actually have some money generating from the moment they're born. It expands access to childcare

for hardworking American families. They're doing increases in funding to the U.S. Coast Guard, you know, to protect us. The Coast Guard, an amazing, an amazing service, which provides critical protection of the United States and helps stop drugs and illegals and human trafficking and sex trafficking. That's about our border security.

They're building new factories. They're supporting the building of new factories. They're growing domestic business operations. They're going to work to help American farmers compete and sell products in foreign markets. They're going to tax the endowments of large universities. When was the last time you heard about this in the big beautiful bill? It's in there. It ends taxpayer funding for sex changes.

Look, I'm telling you right now, I'm not even halfway done the list. The insanity we're hearing around this bill right now bears no resemblance to the reality of it. And I've got a lot more to get to, but I'm telling you, if you wanna pass a piece of legislation, just first and foremost, that secures the nation's borders and ejects illegals and doesn't give away amnesty,

we have a once in a generation opportunity to do that right now. More in a moment and also hot airs David Strom coming up. You've heard me talk about Patreon Mobile for a while now. You probably already know that for years they've stood in the gap for every American that believes freedom is worth fighting for and they're the real deal. So let me ask you a question. Have you switched to Patreon Mobile yet? And if the answer is no, then I have to ask why? Are you worried about coverage? Don't be. Patreon Mobile is one of the few cell phone service providers

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Do you feel like, look, do you feel like you have a good understanding of the big beautiful bill? Has the media been serving you well on this question? Because this has been, I feel like this is one of those stories that has so much misunderstanding. And look, I stand arm in arm with every single conservative who says we need to cut spending

in the United States government. We need to cut it dramatically. No question. I totally and enthusiastically agree with that. And so here's where I am on this subject. President Trump needs to get the agenda we voted for passed. And if you're going to do it, do it now through this package. That's 51 votes in the Senate, baby, get it done.

And then after that, I don't want to see new legislative priorities out of Congress. I don't want to see new big spending priorities, or here's this great new thing the federal government's gonna do for me. I don't believe it, I don't like it, and I don't want it. I don't want any of that. Beyond this big, beautiful bill, the president's legislative agenda here,

which they should pass. I mean, I know the Senate wants to do some tinkering with it. Go ahead, tinker, but this thing has to pass both the House and the Senate. By hook or by crook, you got to get this thing through. What comes next has to be those spending cuts. Every appropriations bill going forward needs to have the following in mind. We can't spend money like drunken sailors.

We can't be spending money like it's a COVID emergency anymore. We have to cut all of that. You can appropriate spending, appropriate it for the basics and nothing else. Cut, cut, cut. And these rescissions packages, Congress, you've got a test in front of you right now. President Trump sends over $9 billion yesterday to cut. Steve Scully says, yeah, yeah, we're gonna do it next week.

All right, fine, but cut it, baby, cut it. Every single Republican should be voting for this. Every single one. I've lost faith that any Democrat will support it, but I'm telling you, every Republican needs to do it, and they can. We just need simple majorities in the Senate to do it. Beyond that, pocket rescissions, the spending cuts of pocket rescissions. I gave you a bit of a basic rundown of how these work yesterday, but I'll reemphasize

here that this 45-day window that the president has, the second he sends over these rescission requests, he sent it over yesterday. It started a 45-day clock. But you know what that means? USAID, the U.S. Institute for Peace, and NPR, and PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, that money is now frozen for 45 days. They don't get to spend it.

The president's decision to send a rescission stops that funding from going out the door for 45 days. Congress can cut it right now and they should. But the way this works is the president can keep doing this to stop spending all the way through the end of the fiscal year. The end of the fiscal year is September 30th. Washington works in insane ways.

September 30th is the end of the fiscal year. What this means is if President Trump sends a request for rescissions on August 18th, August 18th, which we're not that, I know it feels like we're far away. We're not that far away. We're not that, it's June 4th, July, August. If he sends it on August 18th, the effect of that is that it's June 4th, July August. If he sends it on July, it sends on August 18th, the effect of that is that he's able to run out the clock for the rest of the fiscal year and he doesn't even need Congress to get

involved. So if Congress comes along and they've got no stomach for cuts and they might, they might have no stomach for cuts because they're weak, they're weak, they don't have testicular fortitude, they almost always fold. Then President Trump has an option here. He's got a lot of options. And Russ voted, the Office of Management and Budget has been talking about this. Pocket rescissions.

If he fires on August 18th, he ends that spending entirely. He ends it. And Congress doesn't get involved at all. There's no congressional involvement because there's no time for them to be involved. By the end of 45 days, the fiscal year is over. It's a moot point. So the president can, in other words, August 18th, what the White House could do is they

could send over a package for $150 billion in Doge cuts, cut everything, do it right now. They can cut all of it starting on August 18th. So there are some options here, baby, I'm telling you. There's some options. You gotta keep your head on a swivel here. When Washington's involved, there's always some high jinks afoot.

But my goal right now is to hold these people accountable, pressure them into cutting down the size of the federal government, and pressure them into actually passing the agenda that you and I voted for. I think this is about as straightforward as it can possibly get. And yeah, you know the big beautiful bill also removes taxes and registration requirements for firearm silencers and it eliminates silencers from the National Firearms Act. Did you know that? Which means you

don't have to get the government involved in some arduous process just because you want to buy a suppressor. You know about that? Yeah, it's all in there. It's all in this huge awesome package. You may want to know about the details of this thing. Very, very cool. Okay, let me thank our sponsors including Bone Charge as well. Bone Charge infrared sauna blanket. I love that. My wife loves the red light face mask. Can't recommend those enough. I first turned to the sauna blanket

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is our guest from Hot Air, the great David Strom. David Strom, you here with us, sir? So David, first of all, thanks as always for coming on with me. And how are you enjoying Pride Month so far? Hey, Target is no longer doing Pride Month. It's actually like USA Patriotism Month. It is just so exciting to see

that the world appears to be healing. Are they really? So Target, a couple years ago, I remember that they were getting a lot of crap, rightfully so, for, I think they were selling some sort of what child tucking underwear or some sort of perverted garbage. So now they're doing pride in America month. Well, that is what I have seen so far. You've got all these USA flag

theme stuff. I'm going to have to go investigate. I have not been in a Target for years for obvious reasons. Here in Minnesota, we saw Target go woke years and years ago. And they clearly went way, way, way over the top where they were promoting, you know, transing for, you know, toddlers, practically. And now you walk into a Target and I'm sure that they have some sort of pride display hidden in the back of the store, but they are no longer front and center. And so for that matter, most of the logos

of all these companies, they went, you know, rainbow for a day, not rainbow for a month. I just got a message from one of my best sources who may or may not be my wife, Alison. She said, David is right. There's no LGBTQ stuff anywhere to be found that I've seen. It's just a bunch of patriotic swag. I love it.

I had no idea. Well, you know, this is part of the culture war that we have definitely been winning. I mean, if you think about the past few years, it was so depressing because we seem to be losing on this front everywhere. Every major corporation all around the world, unless they were in the Middle East, of course, was promoting not just pride, but trans pride. And it had gotten to the point where you really

felt depressed and suddenly all that has evaporated in a year. Yeah, big time. It is really crazy. Like how much the winds have shifted. Do you think they would ever go back in the opposite direction? I worry that it will, although, you know, because clearly the impulses are there and more importantly, the personnel are still in most of these corporations. They're changing tactics, they're changing strategy. But ultimately, with these big corporations,

they have to respond to the market. And the market is no longer there. In fact, the market really was never there. They just finally got punished. People got tired of it. And, you know, we have to worry that it could come back. But right now there is no market for this outside, you know, a rump 20%. Yeah, okay. Well, that's good news. I'm happy about that. And I'm glad these corporations are backing off this garbage.

Let me get into the mental health of the right versus the left with you. You see this study this week finding that lefties by wide majorities report that they have mental health distress, whereas conservatives report that they're actually, they're getting along just fine. What do you interpret in these numbers that the left is much more mentally

distressed? Is this a, you know, do you find that maybe mental distress is an early indicator of becoming a lefty? Well, I think that it's a self reinforcing trend. Although I do think that over the past decade and a half, and I'll explain this in a minute, there has been a cultivation of mental illness among children. But I think what happens is that people who tend to be unhappy, particularly people who feel put upon, naturally gravitate to the left because the left gives them an explanation for why they feel so happy. And like addicts who want enablers

around them, people gravitate to, you know, the people who tell them it's not your fault or here, I'll help you out, you know, I mean, the extreme leftists actually go out there with their harm reduction, which is, you know, in places like San Francisco, they're handing out drugs, they're handing out needles, they're handing out, you know, shots of vodka to alcoholics. And so they're cultivating that, but it's much worse in the schools. It does seem like, like you kind of were pointing out, they've normalized, they've both normalized mental distress. They've almost valorized mental trauma.

That somehow that you gain some benefit out of having a mental distress rather than working through your issues. My sense of it is that people who consider themselves conservatives, if they've got, you know, if they're suffering from depression or they're suffering some sort of mental distress, that I think be given their tendency sort of self-reliance, their impulses are like, well, how do I work through this? Like, how do I resolve this and get to a place where my life is in a healthy state?

Whereas the left kind of valorizes misery and then acts as if that's the way you're supposed to conduct your life. Well, I think it goes beyond that. The misery itself is validated as proof that you were a better person. How can you not be unhappy with so much unhappiness around the world?

If you are happy, healthy, and well-adjusted, that proves, and this is by the way, in the academic literature where they actually try to explain this phenomenon, they go to the fact that, well, conservatives are not empathetic. Whereas liberals are empathetic and therefore they are unhappy because the world is a bad place and there are bad people in it. So again,

there's this circular validation. They start out with a tendency to be less happy, but then unhappiness itself becomes a virtue and something that should be cultivated. Yes, and they desperately crave some sort of victimhood in order to gain status, which is madness to me. I can't imagine that. The most dangerous thing though is if you look at the literature, it's very clear that there has been this sharp upward tick in depression, anxiety, and mental illness among children.

And that directly correlates with the rise of what they call social and emotional learning, which is, uh, sold is, uh, teaching children resilience. Uh, but it does exactly the opposite. What it does is it teaches anti-resilience. Every time you come up with an obstacle, it's somebody else's fault. Uh, and so, you know, you're being oppressed, obviously, you're trans and you don't know it. And so there's this cultivation of anti resilience in children, which has led to an actually a dramatic increase in suicide rates over the past 15 years. David, how do you think these numbers overlap with religion? In other words, conservatives far more likely

to go to church, far more likely to be religious and to believe in a higher power, the left far less likely to go to church, be religious or believe in a higher power. How much does the lack of church attendance, the lack of belief correspond, do you think, with mental distress? Well, we have actual data on this because if you look again at this literature, one of the markers for people's life satisfaction and resilience itself is church going, identifying with God.

And again, this has to do with the fundamental question of whether the world is good or not. Not whether bad things happen. We all know that bad things happen and we all face mental health challenges at different parts in our life. I mean, mental health problems run in my family. The question is, what is your faith that you can overcome these things? To whom do you look when you are facing trouble? Are you looking to God who is trying to help you? Or are you blaming outside forces and feeling victimized? And the thing about victims is, it's not just that it's not their fault. I mean, a lot of times we face trouble that's not our fault. The question is, is it some bad person's fault?

Do you have to, which is why the left is always about revolution. The solution is to overturn this oppressive system rather than turn inwards into God. Yeah, that's for sure. And it's caused a lot of misery. I mean, the 20th century is defined by the death and destruction that came from that ideology. Okay, so let me move on because I understand that you have some thoughts about the big, beautiful bill.

I was just talking about it at the outset. We were getting into all the details about this. Elon Musk has come out against it now. He says it's practically a great betrayal to support the big, beautiful bill, which encapsulates massive amounts of the president's electoral agenda. What do you make of it, David?

Where are you on this right now? I am schizophrenic on this, because if I were in Congress, I would almost certainly vote for the big, beautiful bill. Not because it's good, but because it is absolutely crucial to President Trump moving on to the next step. He's got to resolve the budget problem. He has to deal with the debt ceiling. He is incorporating or making permanent parts of his agenda that go back

to 2017 forward. At the same time, I think Elon Musk is right about the fundamental question I think Elon Musk is right about the fundamental question about whether the debt is an existential threat and whether or not Congress has the intestinal fortitude and foresight to address that problem. And so I think they're both right. Practically speaking, you have to pass this bill to get to the point where you can reform things. Because if you are fighting about whether or not you're going to fund the Pentagon, whether you're going to fund basic services, you can't fight about anything else. And therefore, reforms are only possible if you pass this bill. But this bill itself, if this is the last thing that ever gets done, is, you know, just a disaster. It's no bigger disaster than everything that's been done over the past, you know, 30, 50 years. It's just a continuation along a path that is going to end with the destruction

of the United States of America. So I think it's- Well, put differently, you know, they could pass literally anything right now, David, and it would amount to a disaster if they failed to cut spending in the ensuing years. So to your point, they could pass a piece of legislation that banishes the semicolon from any use in the United States. By the way, we're basically not using it now anyway,

but if they banished it with legislation and they didn't correct for spending, you could say we're headed to a debt crisis because of this. Yeah, that would be true, I guess, technically. Here's what I love about the bill, and I spent the open so I won't relitigate the entire thing. I love that it is a real border security bill that we've never seen before with Congress. In the 1980s, Reagan gets presented a border security slash amnesty bill, and all we got

was a lot of amnesty and not much border security. And that kept happening over and over in Washington. Here you're watching as for the first time we have a vehicle for a simple majority vote in the United States Senate to fully fund the rest of the border wall, to fully fund ICE, to fully fund deportation operations, fully fund the logistics to get people out of our country. And if you think as I do that the sovereignty of our country is existential to use the word that is coming up as we talk about the debt, then you should be rooting on the passage of this legislation.

Do we need to get control of the spending? Absolutely. Should we use the rescissions process? Trump's starting with it. He just did it yesterday. That's a way to do it. And should Congress get off its fat ass and start actually cutting spending

and stop just letting it happen? 100%. But this big, beautiful bill, I mean, candidly, David, this is our big, beautiful shot to get something important done, and we're not gonna get another one. Well, that's why I would vote for this bill,

despite all the frustration that I and Elon Musk have with the fact that we're not addressing the most significant issues having to do with the budget. But this isn't going to, I mean, that is not going to happen until you set a baseline from which you can cut. I mean, if we're in a position where, and this is why I'm not angry that we have people like Chip Roy, Rand Paul, and those guys talking about this chastising Congress,

moving the rhetorical ball forward, but they should not win this, this particular battle because, you know, where you do this and whether you do this, it doesn't have to be in this bill. You know, this is the baseline from which you cut. But if you doesn't have to be in this bill. This is the baseline from which you cut. But if you don't have that baseline out there, we're gonna be having this argument about raising the debt ceiling, whether or not we're going to fund the national parks and all of that stuff.

And that distracts from the most important issue. Yeah, and also this spending cut is $1.6 trillion over 10 years. It is, I know, look, I want more than that. But $1.6 trillion over 10 years is the single largest spending cut that Congress has ever produced in any piece of legislation ever. Just for, you know, some frame of reference here, it is relatively massive, but we have an out of control government, of course, $37 trillion in debt, we got to do a lot more cuts.

And it hasn't been talked enough about. But you know, those fact, I have a piece coming out today on this, those Medicaid cuts that the democrats are screaming about, it basically is the Medicaid equivalent of welfare reform. I mean, the people who are actually being kicked off, there are two basic categories. And the first category is illegal immigrants. And the second category is people who will not get off their butts and go to work. I mean, we're really talking about the 35 year old guy playing video games in his parents' basement.

Why should we write unlimited checks to these people who refuse to participate in the, contribute to the society? Yeah, and welfare reform worked in the 90s. It actually achieved its goals. And we can do it again right now. All right. David Strom over at Hot Air, always producing great stuff. Thank you, man. Always appreciate you.

Always have such great conversations with you. So you're my favorite guy. You know that. I know, brother. You're the best. Thank you very much, David. Have a good one. There he is. Dave, you to David Strom over at Hot Air. Great American, really always very nice to have him with us. I wanna take you through some of the big clips

from yesterday that, some of this is right out of the White House. You remember after Elon Musk attacked President Trump's bill, now he didn't attack President Trump specifically, it sounds like the two of them have a good relationship, but he went out of his way to attack the big, beautiful bill yesterday.

It was Peter Ducey, who was the, I think the first one to deliver the news to Caroline Levitt in the White House press briefing. Take a look at cut one here as the White House reacts to Elon Musk's criticism. It just crossed, Caroline, how mad do you think President Trump is gonna be when he finds out that Elon Musk said?

I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive outrageous pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination Shame on those who voted for it. You know, you did wrong, you know it Look the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill. It doesn't change the president's opinion This is one big beautiful bill and he's sticking to it. Yeah. you. The president is totally fine with that. He's heard the criticism. You know, reportedly I saw it was Mark Caputo. He's a reporter for Axios. He was over on War Room. He was talking to those, the great people over there. And he said that, you know, this Elon thing, there have been heads being butted behind the scenes between Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, and Elon thing, there have been heads being butted behind the scenes between Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, and Elon Musk, the Doge, the Department of Government Efficiencies.

At one point, apparently, Besson had confronted Elon and accused him of being a fraud, which is a big statement. Now, I like both of these guys. I've been impressed by both of their contributions to our country. But Scott Besson says, wait a second, you said you were gonna cut $2 trillion. Then you said you were gonna cut 1 trillion. And then you said you were gonna cut 500 billion. And now we're down to 150 billion.

You're a fraud, said Scott Besson. And the two of them really came to blows over all of this. Now, that said, I love that you and I are in the world where government officials are arguing over just how much they can possibly cut. I prefer that than the world where they are they take advantage of you and then spend this into oblivion. That's a that's a much better situation to be in. But clearly, you've got conflicting personalities, conflicting strategies for how to tackle all of this going on. And, you know, one thing to keep an eye on is is allegedly Elon Musk may be concerned

that the electric vehicle benefits I mentioned to you earlier, but I'll reiterate here may have been taken away here, that the government's going to stop playing favorites with EVs. And that may be animating some of his anger about this. It's possible. But just, again, all I want is all of the context. Just give me all the available information on what's motivating these guys. I mean, one guy that I've really enjoyed following on all of this has been Stephen Miller. Oh, that guy's the real deal.

I really believe in him. And he, like me, thinks that you don't have a country if you don't have borders. You don't have a country if you don't have a secure community and eject foreign nationals who've invaded it. You just don't have a country. You don't have it. And so that's what Stephen Miller is very focused on. And as he keeps pointing out, this bill, it's about mandatory spending. That's the only thing you can do through reconciliation,

these mandatory spending cuts. You want to cut stuff that's discretionary, you want to cut all this other stuff, you got to do it through the appropriations process or through rescissions. Those are the answers here. That's how all of this works. Also at the White House yesterday, Caroline Levitt was asked about Biden, President AutoPen, Biden's signatures by Peter Deuce. He wanted to know, wait a second,

what does this mean for all of these documents that had robot signatures on them? It doesn't seem like Biden even knew what was going on. Take a look at cut three here as she talks about President AutoPen. Peter. Thank you, Caroline. When you look at these last minute Biden pardons, the big ones, Biden siblings, Fauci, January 6th committee, right?

Most of the big ones have the same very neat signature. We would expect that probably to be the auto pen. There is one that looks different. It looks authentic. In fact, if you look at the last name, it almost looks like the President was having a hard time spelling his last name there. Is this White House of the opinion that the only pardon that would count is one that the President signed himself. It's very interesting. Very interesting props if you want to bring them to my office later so I can take a closer look.

I would like to do that. The President is making a good point when he discusses the usage of the auto pen. Who was running the country for the past four years? Perhaps those documents were signed with the auto pen, something that this, I believe the Department of Justice is looking into as you saw Ed Martin made an announcement at the Department of Justice this morning to launch an investigation because the American people deserve answers.

Is there? Yes, they do. Yes, they do. So Ed Martin, I'm glad she brought him up. Ed Martin's been great. Hasn't he been great? You saw Ed Martin on this program. Ed Martin has been very talkative about what they're up to as they look into the corruption of the Biden administration. And Ed Martin in particular, coming out yesterday morning, remember he's the head of the weaponization task force in the Justice Department.

And, you know, I'm starting to see the legacy media is finally catching up to things that you and I knew weeks ago. We knew all about this. And now what you're getting is Reuters is reporting Trump's Justice Department is examining pardons issued by Biden. They're screeching. They can't even believe this is happening. I knew this was happening. You knew this was happening. You knew this was happening. If you wanna find out what's happening, watch this show because Reuters is gonna find out about it weeks later.

Reuters saying, oh my goodness, the Trump Justice Department is examining this. Dateline Washington, a senior official and Republican US President Trump's Justice Department told staff on Monday that he's been directed to investigate clemency granted by Democrat Joe Biden in the waning days of his presidency to members of his family and death row inmates. Ed Martin, the Justice

Department's pardon attorney wrote in an email seen by Reuters that the investigation involves whether Biden was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through the use of auto pen or other means. This is precisely this again not news it's news to Reuters it's only news in so far as Ed Martin is talking to other members of the justice department now maybe that he didn't talk to before he talked to you he told you about this on this show yes, we've been looking into Ed, excuse me, looking into Joe Biden's name being affixed to pardons with the auto pen, how those decisions

were made and whether or not he was even competent enough to sign off on such signatures. This has massive, massive implications for whether or not we can straight up disqualify the use of that pen to sign documents that were fraudulently foisted on the American people. They say the email stated that Martin's investigation is focused on preemptive pardons that Biden issued to several members of his family.

This is Biden family pardons and clemency that spared 37 federal inmates from the death penalty, converting their sentences to life in prison. Just before he relinquished the presidency on January 20th, Biden pardoned five members of his own family. What Reuters is not telling you and they say just before is while he was at the inauguration, Biden's old butt was in his seat at the inauguration as the pardons were being sent out the door, being signed by the auto pen and being distributed to the public.

Look, the family was pardoned, the whole family. Biden's literally at the inauguration, so I don't think he signed it. It was obviously an auto pen that signed it. The guy's non-compass meant this. He didn't even know this was happening. So let's get rid of these pardons. The pardons went to James Biden, Frank Biden, Valerie Biden, as well as their spouses, John Owens and Sarah Biden. Biden on December 1st pardoned his son, Hunter Biden. But notice that when Peter Ducey talked about the Hunter Biden pardon, that's the one pardon that had Biden's illegible signature scrawled onto it. So that one may be the only one that's actually effective, that one may be the only one that

could stand up here with real genuine scrutiny. Martin's email did not specify which part of Biden family members were being investigated. It also didn't make clear who directed Martin to launch the investigation. A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. And a Biden spokesperson did not immediately provide comment.

Let me add some more context to this though. Ed Martin told you, told this program that he has received responses from Biden world people. He has been getting answers back from them. He was demanding answers. They've been sending information back. Now, what does that mean? We'll see.

He also claims that he has a whistleblower, a high level Democrat, who knows all about the gatekeepers inside of that White House. Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer and Ron Klain and the way that they were actually running the country and puppeteering Joe Biden. The White House was asked yesterday, hey why are you spending time looking backwards on this and Caroline Levitt smartly pointed out, yeah we're spending some time looking at this but guess what the

overwhelming lion's share of the work we're doing is for right now and for the future of this country. And yes this is is a small piece of what we're focused on, but it is a very important piece of what we're focused on. Very important as they look back on the biggest constitutional crisis of our lifetimes and what can we do to salvage our country and get it back on track. Hey, thanks for watching Vince. I always appreciate you being here with me. If you're not watching or if you're listening, thank you for listening to Vince. You can watch me rumble.com slash Vince live each day. We do this at 10 a.m. Eastern every day.

And I got this handy little radio show where I can expand on all of this and we talk about a whole bunch more. 12 to 3 Eastern each day. Find your local listings at thevinceshow.com or watch me live, rumble.com slash Vince. As always, so good to have you with us. Thank you again for watching and listening to this program.